Tennant Creek Telegraph Station, NT

​Arriving at the Threeways Roadhouse we promptly unhitched Florence and took off south down the Stuart Highway in the direction we had just come from. And I literally mean we “took off” down the highway, unshackled from Florence, Cherry was able to really feel the breeze through her radiator grill as we took advantage of the 130km speed limit! Just north of Tennant Creek we had passed the Overland Telegraph Line Station and I was bursting to check it out. I’m completing fascinating by stone dwellings and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to visit a restored stone dwelling in Central Australia. Access to the Station’s interior requires a key obtained from the visitor’s centre, which being late in the day we didn’t have time to collect but we made the most of our experience, exploring the surrounding buildings and old graves. The visit definitely had a profound impact on me, and I was left pondering the connection between stone dwellings and hot-dry arid climates. 

Extract from Gumby’s unfinished 2022 Honours Thesis…
As I stepped from the air-conditioned sanctuary of the car, I was struck by the intensity of the heat, I felt as though I’d just cracked the door of a hot oven, instantly blasted, my cheeks flushed, eyes watered, and lungs burnt as I gulped for air. It was late afternoon in Jurnkkurakurr (Tennant Creek), Central Australia, January 2019, Australia was experiencing an “unusual extended period of heatwaves” (BoM, 2019, 14 March, p. 4), the Larapinta Trail in Tjoritja (West MacDonnell National Park) near Mparntwe (Alice Springs) was ablaze (DTSC, 2019), and the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres had issued a bleak outlook, “I believe we are losing the race. Climate change is running faster than we are” (UN, 2019, para. 3).

The Tennant Creek Overland Telegraph Line Station situated approximately 520 kilometres north of Alice Springs, constructed of stone in 1874 (PWCNT, 2002), was restored and opened to the public in 2012. Michael Holstein a traditional stonemason was engaged to dismantle and rebuild the external Station walls, stone by stone, he stated the stone was laid incorrectly, the grain faced the wrong direction permitting it to shale in the wind (Brain, 2012). Completed in 1872 the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) was heralded as an engineering triumph that included the installation of 36,000 poles traversing the continent, approximately 3,000 kilometres, south to north, from Kurdnatta (Port Augusta) to Garramilla (Darwin), and included the construction of eleven repeater Stations, to house equipment and personnel (Pugh, 2022).
​
When I visited the Station in January 2019, Tennant Creek had just experienced a record-breaking 23 consecutive days over 40°C (BoM, 2019, p.30). There were no other cars in the carpark as I retreated from the intensity of the sun under the verandah and noticed the cooling effect created by the stone walls. I was reminded of traditional stone architecture prominent in the Middle East. The Köppen-Geiger climate system classified Tennant Creek as BWh, an arid hot-dry desert, the same classification given to the Middle East, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, and Egypt (Beck et al., 2018).  I wondered if the Tennant Creek OTL Station had been constructed from locally quarried stone in response to the climate, and what it was like to live in such a building?