TOD Tour 2.0 Day 39 - Barkly Homestead to Banka Banka

Where the Barkly Highway meets the Stuart

Odd day.

The run across to the Three Ways, where the Barkly Highway meets the Stuart Highway fairly close to the geographical centre of the Northern Territory, was just a steady drive. The new Forester is achieving better results than I could have predicted and tows the AVAN with such ease that cruising on 100km/hr is an easy task for it. With the open road speed limit set at a ridiculous 130km/hr, we are still slower than the cars but we occasionally overtake another van. With thousands of kms of road with unfenced stock roaming about, it seems a road toll just waiting to happen.

We knew we were about to run into several days off the reservation, so first turned south for Tennant Creek for supplies. We spent an uncomfortable hour there picking up what we needed and feeling like intruders. This was more than looking different to the locals. There was a very definite “attitude” and the bars on the buildings, ten feet high fences topped in barbed wire and drawbridge front gates of the caravan park made us feel uneasy. We have traveled a lot through Australia’s outback but this was something different. Our lack of comfort appeared to be backed up by reviews on social media and travel sites. We have never felt frightened among Aboriginal people before.

The last 100kms of our day was north to Banka Banka Station, formerly a working cattle station owned by the Kidman group. We had tried to stay here on our way to WA in 2008, but arrived just on sunset to find the gate locked and a sign saying “Don’t embarrass yourself by coming up the drive”. Today we arrived about 12:30pm.

Sites are arranged in a rough circle. Water is available but we weren’t keen to try it. There is no power. Overnight gigs are pretty easy as the car stays attached and we often don’t need the usual infrastructure. About 6:30pm, the bar opens and visitors are invited to join the smaller circle around the Banka Banka fire pit: a two part road culvert which has been inverted and filled in at each end. All ages gathered around, for along with oldies, a German couple with their three young children also  communed with us. The big attraction tonight was an infant children’s python, found in one of the washing machines.

It was a quiet, dark night. A new moon did little to help the stars shed light over the campsite but they did a good job of providing a marvelous spectacle. This is why we head off to far flung places.

Click for today's photos

Banka Banka itself was a bit of a disappointment. We had read much of it and in the end, it fell short of our expectations. Not that it wasn’t pleasant but rustic charm loses its unique appeal when you’ve experienced it so often and when it just appears tired.

Sue did enjoy watching the donkeys. This wore off with the braying into the small digit hours.

Tennant Creek Gold Stamp Battery

Tennant Creek
Larimah, Daly Waters, Dunmarra, Elliot, Renner Springs (Stuart Highway) 575 kms

In order to maximise our time at Alice Springs and Uluru, Sue and I had revised the itinerary so we would have two long driving days from Mataranka, until reaching Alice Springs. This also meant we avoided some of the dodgy places where at which we may have had to stay if we continued with the original plan and only travelled between three andfour hundred kilometres in the day.

Given we had seen everything we wanted to see from Tennant Creek north, on our way to the Top End, this seemed a reasonable change of plan. It would also put us in Alice Springs for a Sunday ride on the Old Ghan Railway. Therefore, we faced up to the 575 kilometres which stretched before us to Tennant Creek with a stiff upper lip and the resolve to do as much as we could prior to lunch, therefore making the afternoon an easier task. This we did, with an early start (7:50 am) and excellent driving conditions, allowing lunch to be taken south of Renner Springs.

Conditions were hot and our roadside stop had no shade and we allfelt the heat and dry, driving wind. It was a perfect example of the value of air conditioning in the modern motor car. This was something Sue and I reflected on in our post lunch drive into Tennant, inspired by radio reports of the WWII vets who had reenacted their transport driving feats offfty years ago, by driving in a convoy from Alice Springs to Darwin.

The drive was completed at 3:30 pm, and we had the dome up in twenty minutes and were headed back into town for house keeping chores.

Our change of plans gave us the opportunity of visiting the 5:00 pm show at the Government Gold Stamp Battery. We had missed this on our northward visit to TC, owing to Sarah being ill. The facility is located on a hill to the western edge of TC and was established in 1935, when the government saw a need to service the small miners of the district, supplying a means by which they could crush and process their ore. The ten stamp battery - the number referring to the number of stamping heads which crush the ore - was the third such government battery established. The current building had been established when the original one had literally shaken itself apart from the constant thumping of the stampers.

Our tour guide, Jill, had a keen sense of humour and enlivened what could have been a dry tour, with many witty stories of events tied to the battery and the gold rush in general. She had an excellent technical knowledge of the installation - so much so, I didn't have to correct her once - and we were impressed with the manner in which the 90 minutes of the tour was organised. We saw all stages of the process, from the dumping of the ore, through crushing, secondary milling and smelting to form the gold bar. She had one annoying habit of finishing every anecdote with a heavily accentuate "very ...." but in the end, the kids were anticipating each it and Sarah, in particular, thought it hilarious.

Tennant Creek

A small, but informative museum completed the official part of the tour, but I used the vantage point on the hill to record a great sunset over TC, with banks of cloud adding to the orange and reds of the hills. $16 well spent!

Back to the camp and dinner in the camper's kitchen, with a few funny yarns and relaxed, family fun for all members of the crew.

Our evening was disturbed by three drops of rain which sent the adults scurrying for the tent fly at 12:30 am and Sam's tossing and turning in restless, fitful sleep.

AUC 1995 - Sue's Haircut

The car was the major beneficiary of the day's activities, with a 40000 km service and new tyres to
breath fresh life into its frame. Still, $800 well spent, given the safety margin a fully serviced vehicle offers.

Sue had her head shaved ... I mean haircut... in an effort to repair the damage she had done in trying to cut her own hair at Mount Isa. She had disappeared with the scissors and told me she was going to clean her teeth. How gullible am I ?

The hat covers the shaven head

The new style was hard to describe in words which did not give rise to open hostility between us. Suffice to say, an orange smock and bundle of pamphlets would have completed the look!

Sarah ran a fever in the afternoon, following a morning of feeling off colour, so it was off to the doctor again. Diagnosis was an infection stemming from a cut she had received the previous day, so a course of antibiotics came her way, as well.

The first of our photographs were processed and Sue got top marks for her "sunsets " at Karumba and for a myriad of other shots over the past three and a half weeks.

The evening proved interesting, with interruption following interruption, but we eventually all dropped off to sleep, in readiness for the change of camp the morning would bring.

AUC 1995 - Dot MIne Tour

My cough, sniffle and occasional low grade temperature had reached the point where action had to be taken to investigate my sinuses. Our hosts at the caravan park were able to direct me to a private practitioner and within the hour I was at the chemists waiting for a antibiotic to cure infected sinuses. Sue was justly proud of her diagnosis! The net affect of lack of sleep and a blocked head was enough to knock me out for a large part of the day and we all took it easy - although the children might not agree with that statement, given they spent about four hours doing school work.

Chris was a revelation. He had his head down the whole time as he worked through and completed his Science work and then the start of his unit on Japanese. Sarah and Samuel spent most of the morning wasting their time through writing sessions which were less than satisfactory. The reward Chris achieved, come lunch time, bought howls on anguish from the younger two students and a smile of satisfaction at a job well done, from Chris.

Chris and I spent long sessions on the guitar during the afternoon, although the standard of the play from Dad was well short of that set by Son. However, we received the plaudits of the female owner of the caravan park and nods of approval from all the passers by.

Ego enhanced, I left for the car wash area - a stony rectangle with an attached hose. For the use of the
water, I was charged 50 cents ! The car had been unclean since the first mud splattered it in the driveway as we left home, so it was high time the combination of dirt and mud from two states and one territory be cleaned away and the original surface revealed.

This done, we had Kangaroo mince hamburgers and walked to the waiting point for the mine tour we were undertaking for the evening. The tour to the Dot Mine, owned and worked by Col Bremmer, was a night time tour which was to include a cuppa and yarn under the stars. It came as highly recommended by the caravan park proprietors. We were told, that if we were lucky, we might be there on a night when he makes his famous fruit cake.

A short bus trip north to the Warego turnoff and then wes tfor a few km and we bumped and rattled across the entry road. As we approached the mine, a string of lights snaked up a short, sharp hill, away from a camp structure consisting of galvanised tin and tubular steel pipes.

Col's Camp - as he described it - was a shade roof, table and chairs and an open fireplace where billies were already beginning to heat the water for the promised cuppa. Our host met us as we alighted from the bus - "Hi, I 'm Colin." - and bade us to sit around the fire. He then gave us a short history of the development of gold mining in the Tennant Creek area. The gold here, was the last major find of gold in Australia and happened well after the gold rush days of the 19th century, in the early 1930's. The other major difference of the gold in this area, was it was found in association with
ironstone, whereas all previous gold in Australia had been found with quartz.

This particular mine had been operated by a German chap called Werner and he dug shafts and mined
gold here from 1932 to 1935. At the completion of his time here, he took up other mining interests, but always with the intention of returning. As he was set to return in the late 30's, he was interned for the duration of the Second World War and his death in the middle 1940's prevented his return. Werner had lived here with his family - wife and children - and had worked with at least one other man to dig the horizontal shaft which chased the lead into the hill and the eventual, vertical shaft which sought to further his fortune. Ultimately, he mined only $600 worth of gold from the mine, which would have hardly covered his expenses.

The current owner - our host Col - had taken up the lease "some time back" but gave away any hope of great financial gain from the mine when the leads he was following turned out to be false. He failed to mention the mine produces - by my estimate of the people he said pass through it - six times the amount of money each week, poor old Werner had reaped from it in three years! He had struck the motherload, indeed! It only goes to show, you don't have to swing a pick to be a
successful miner; it just depends on the richness of the ore you can access and in the Northern Territory, the tourist dollar is the richest vein imaginable.

After donning hard hats and being further equipped with $2 hand-held torches, we went in groups of eight - for safety reasons - through the Dot Mine. It consisted of small shaft which went ten metres, horizontally, into the side of the hill, to a thirty metre vertical shaft. The top of this shaft has a raised platform over it and ventilation shafts lead off in one direction and another horizontal shaft follows a lead in another direction for ten metres. The vertical shaft cannot be accessed: that is, unless you fall through the rather exposed holes which are on either side of a short ladder which descends a metre to to the second horizontal shaft!

In this second horizontal shaft, a bat was nesting against afar wall. The adults in the party were
suspicious of the ultra still bat. He could have been tired from his day asleep in the cave ...in fact, he could have been stuffed!

That was our mine tour. Ten minutes and twenty metres through tunnels which were about three quarter normal height and we were back out among the stars at the top of the hill. The tunnels are lit by twelve volt lights which are fed by a battery at the top and bottom of the hill and charged during the day from solar energy.

Down the hill at the camp fire, billy tea was being served by Col's offsider. This was a brew in which
spoons would have been free standing, but I had it straight and black ...just to prove what a man I was. I was still picking tannin off my teeth the next morning !

Before Col's return, we were assisted in our developing knowledge base of the local area by the erstwhile assistant - "ask him anything," said Col ... as long as we asked questions which would fit into his set patter. Col arrived back from the last of the groups he was taking through for the evening and sat himself down among his audience. He all but ignored any questions which were put, retold us the history of gold mining in Tennant Creek - presumably in case we had missed it the first time - and then told us three excellent poems by Will Ogilvie.

Ogilvie was a bush poet who wrote poems in the second half of the last century. They were evocative
descriptive pieces about men and women and their lives on the land.

There was no doubt this was the best part of the evening.

Exactly at 8:30 pm, he stood, thanked us for visiting him in his camp and being interested in his mine and bid us farewell. As a visitor, I felt inclined to ask why I had to pay for the privilege, but I would have embarrassed the crew.

This cloud had only drizzle ... no silver lining.

AUC 1995 - Tennant Creek (NT)

Tennant Creek (NT) 
Wunara Store, Barkly Homestead (Barkly/Stuart Highways) 473 kms

No tent, no sleeping bags, no air mattresses and no ports to pack ... little wonder we were on the road by 7:45 am and commencing what would be, for all of us, our first day in the Northern Territory.

Before leaving Camooweal, we stocked up on fuel at 85 c/litre, amid the grumps from the proprietor
because we had only driven from Mount Isa and he wouldn't be able to sell us much fuel.

"Hardly worth filling up !" was the comment passed.

The first leg of our day's travel would be the 270 kilometre stretch to Barkly Homestead Roadhouse. This would be one of the longest legs of any part of our trip, without other fuel stops, but the Futura - even on a bad day - was well beyond this range. On the flat highway which stretched ahead and with no headwind, low fuel consumption was expected and achieved. In fact, subsequent refuelling at Barkly Homestead revealed our lowest fuel consumption for the journey, with a reading of 12.95 L/ 100 kms. The price off fuel more than made up for this, with an exorbitant 95.2 c/litre being charged!

About halfway to Barkly Homestead, we received an unexpected surprise, when we came upon a feature not shown on any of our maps. Wunara Store is small craft shop which sells drinks and sweets in the middle of nowhere. Billy tea and damper are also available. The store has been constructed of ant bed or termite mound, which has been crushed, had spinifex grass added and then hand pressed into moulds to form mud bricks approximately 400 mm x 160 mm x 200 mm. Some of the walls have oversize bricks in place which have a hole placed through the vertical profile to allow a metal rod to be placed through the wall, tying roof and floor. The exterior area has shelters fabricated of spinifex grass bound inside chicken wire and supported by poles cut from the local scrub.

The store has been made by a local aboriginal tribe and they are running it as a community collective.
Aboriginal art and artifacts are for sale in the shop. There is a strong Christian influence in the notices hanging on the walls and the literature which is available and by their own request, the store and the picnic areas are an alcohol free zone.

Sue took over for the second leg of the trip, which saw us through to our lunch stop at a roadside picnic table near a bore and wind pump. Here we met a young German tourist who was travelling alone and working his way toward the west coast after travelling up the east coast of Australia with his sister. We compared notes about places he had seen and he shared his thoughts about his own country and Europe. It was a most interesting way to consume two tuna sandwiches and a cuppa.

Leaving our new acquaintance behind, we pushed on until we reached the Three ways - the junction of the Barkly and Stuart Highways - and turned south for Tennant Creek, which was to be our destination and stopping place for the next few nights.

Ahead, the small but colourful McDouall Ranges showed us the location of Tennant Creek. These ranges had bled gold for many years since the first discovery took place in the early 1930's and they held at least a point of relief from what had been a fairly endless line of flatness.

Approximately 20km north of Tennant Creek, we came upon the Overland Telegraph Station, which
was established over 120 years ago and had been a vital link in the communication chain between
Adelaide and Darwin. Featuring the main homestead and several important out buildings, all built from stone, this was an interesting hour of wandering. Guided tours are available, but we had chosen to arrive unannounced and we still found it a detour well worth making.

Originally staffed by fhe hardiest of souls, here was a place which screamed history from the moment you approached it. Located in the remotest of country, the men who lived and worked here had all the stuff of heroes. Apart from relaying messages along the Telegraph Line, they also provided an important respite for weary travellers, a trading place for local natives and a repair shop for damaged equipment and vehicles.

The out buildings included a smoke house and a storage shed, which had been cleverly constructed so as to maximise the coolness of the materials it was made from. In addition to this, the floor was sunken into the earth for added coolness. Another important out building was the blacksmith's workshop, where all manner of work had been performed on equipment and beast.

The station has had multiple uses since ceasing its original function. It has also been the accommodation for a pastoral lease, a butcher's shop and the headquarters for defence
forces during mobilisation north in the Second World War. The converted butcher's shop has a refrigerated cool room, cutting block and carcass rail. The main building is in disrepair, but it is evident efforts are being made to bring it back to its former glory.

From here, we sought out the town itself and evenhially arrived at our accommodation, to be pleasantly surprised to find a grassy, shaded tent site. In order to replenish our grocery supply, we ventured into town to the local supermarket. With almost all of our shopping completed. Sue was stopped in her tracks by seeing the spitting image of our former work mate and friend Helen Goodacre. Remembering her twin sister lived in Tennant Creek, I was sent hurrying
out of the store in order to catch her and after awkward introductions, our bonafides were good enough to have us invited back to Mary's office for a few quiet beers.

To say Mary and Helen are alike is to overstate the obvious. Helen's facial appearance, gestures and that evil deep laugh, were duplicated in Mary. The only perceptible difference was a slight NT vocal drawl. We spent an hour chatting with her and her work chums, before politely taking our leave. Her warm welcome really got us off to a great NT start and Sarah and Sue were flabbergasted two people could be so alike.

Returning home to a red meat meal - kangaroo and beef steaks - we settled in for the evening. At about the time we were thinking of attacking the dishes, a bedraggled pair arrived to take up the adjacent tent site, with a tale of woe. A young couple - Steve and Kay - working their way from Perth to Sydney, had the misfortune of having a front wheel bearing seize up at 100 km/hour, about 50km north of Tennant Creek. Their car had been towed to a garage and they had just returned from walking into town - the park being away from the centre of town - to get something to eat. All of their supplies were in the vehicle and all they had were the clothes on their back, sleeping bags and their tent.

After sharing a cuppa and beer with them and a long conversation about nothing in particular but
everything in general, we undertook to assist with transport and a breakfast meal in the morning. He was a resident of the NSW central coast, who had travelled through Europe and the Americas and she was a pommy expat who had travelled back to Australia with him, through Nepal and Asia, finally seeing the best parts of this country on the way to his home.

The air was cool and my cough freshening, so it was off to bed and a well earned rest after such a full day.