Travellers in the Northern Territory of Australia will soon realise that there are huge distances between very few towns along “The Track”
Some places with names on the map are simple “Roadhouses “comprising of a supermarket, a petrol station and prefab bedrooms plus an area to pull in your caravan or pitch up a tent.
A place shown on the map as Pamayu has a population of some 33 people and Wikipedia describes it as follows:
Pamayu is a locality in the Northern Territory of Australia located about 725 kilometres (450 mi) south-east of the territory capital of Darwin.
The locality’s name which is pronounced as “Bama-yu” is derived from the local Djingli aboriginal people’s name for the site where the Powell Creek Telegraph Station was located. Its boundaries and name were gazetted on 4 April 2007 and fully surrounds the localities of Elliott and Newcastle Waters.
The 2016 Australian census which was conducted in August 2016 reports that Pamayu had 33 people living within its boundaries.
The boys also had to make sure that Lipstick’s tank remains as full as possible due to the long distances between available petrol stations..
Tennant Creek is a small village
Tennant Creek is located in the middle of the Northern Territory, 376.5 metres above sea level. Average maximum temperatures range from 24 degrees to 38 degrees, with an average of 22 days per year exceeding 40 degrees.
The first European explorer to pass through the region was John McDouall Stuart in 1860, on his unsuccessful first attempt to cross the continent from South to North. He named a creek to the north of town after John Tennant, a financier of his expedition and a pastoralist from Port Lincoln, South Australia , in gratitude for the financial help Tennant had provided for Stuart’s expeditions across Australia.
he Overland Telegraph that once linked Melbourne to London was constructed in the 1870s and forged a corridor through the middle of the continent that the Explorer’s Way and Ghan train now travel. A temporary building for a telegraph repeater station was erected near the watercourse of Tennant Creek in 1872. Two years later, the solid stone buildings of the Tennant Creek Telegraph Station that remain on the site today, were completed by the occupants of the station. This is one of the four remaining original telegraph stations in Australia. Tennant Creek was the site of Australia’s last gold rush during the 1930s and at that time was the third-largest gold producer in Australia.
Team Lipstick was surprised to find out that there are many places in the Northern Territories where the consumption of alcohol is restricted… Tennant Creek is one of them.
In the Northern Territories they have a “Banned Drinker Register” where people behaving badly under the influence of alcohol will be registered and barred from purchasing further alcoholic drinks – and the following warning is presented all over….
. Banned drinker register (BDR)
Since 1 September 2017 all citizens and visitors to the Northern Territory wanting to buy takeaway alcohol need to show photo ID for the Banned Drinker Register (BDR). The BDR identifies people who are banned from purchasing takeaway alcohol and stops their purchase. It assists in reducing alcohol-related harm to individuals, families and the community.