TENNANT CREEK

town, central Northern Territory, Australia, on Tennant Creek, which was explored in 1860 by the Scot John McDouall Stuart and named after a South Australian pastoralist. Earliest settlement of the site began in 1872 with the construction of a station on the Overland Telegraph Line. Although gold was discovered in 1930 in the surrounding low, flat-topped hills, the town was not officially proclaimed until 1954. The discovery in 1955 of copper and silver has made Tennant Creek the Northern Territory's leading mineral production centre. A large smelter was built in the mid-1970s, but some of the mines' output continues to be trucked to the railhead at Alice Springs (315 miles south) via Stuart Highway. Beef cattle graze the countryside, and an abattoir was opened at Tennant Creek in 1980; there are also deposits of tin, mica, and wolfram (tungsten) in the vicinity. Pop. (1986 prelim.) 3,503.