Arltunga - Northern Territory

Population - Very Few

Situated 110km east of Alice Springs along the East Macdonnel Ranges in the Northern Territory, Arltunga was Central Australia’s first Goldfield. The 110 km from Alice Springs can be divided into the 77km of bitumen which takes You past the turnoffs too Emily Gap, Jessie Gap, Corroboree Rock, Trephina Gorge to Ross River Homestead, and the 33km of gravel road from Ross River Homestead to Arltunga.

Arltunga Goldfield was found in 1887 by prospectors who had come to the area after hearing about rubies that had been found at Ruby Gap by David Lindsay and his survey and exploring party. The first gold was found near Paddy’s Rockhole, known as ‘Annurra ntinga’ by the Eastern Arrernte people and means smelly water. To the early miners this sounded like ‘Arltunga’ and the name was adopted for the whole goldfield. Soon the goldfield had become Central Australia’s first industry based settlement. The South Australian Government saw great promise in the goldfield and commissioned David Lindsay to survey the town of Stuart, now Alice Springs, to be a supply base for the goldfield. After years of struggle and hardship the gold was slowly extracted and by 1905, althoug h the field was barely existant, a township was surveyed at the crossroads and it became the commercial centre of Arltunga, with a well, store and a hotel. As is often the case, the town came too late as the field perished, gold became harder to find and the miners moved on. Since the First World War there have been attempts to reopen the goldfield, but none of them ever amounted to much. During the Depression of the 1930’s a rush of more than a hundred miners was as close as Arltunga could get to its heyday. The White Range area was reworked again in the 1950s, and a few mining companies have looked at the area since, but the gold remains unviable. During World War 2 the Catholic Mission for Aboriginal people in Alice Springs moved to Arltunga. The Mission they set up was called Little Flower Mission and its approximately 200 residents lived there until 1953, when they moved to the Santa Teresa Mission, further south of Alice Springs. In 1977 the Arltunga Goldfields were declared as a Historical Reserve as it represents one of the first major settlements in Central Australia.

Accommodation

Arltunga has a couple of accommodation options. The Hotel has accommodation as well as a campground.

Tours To Arltunga

Alice Springs is a tourism hub. There are hundreds of tour options in and around the Alice.

Whatever your style, you'll find a great Tour in Alice Springs.

Things To See and Do

There are so many Things To See around Arltunga.

Start with a visit to the Alice Springs Visitor Centre before You leave.

Alice Springs Visitor Information Centre

60 Gregory Terrace
Alice Springs
Northern Territory,
PO Box 0870
Alice Springs
Northern Territory, 0871
Phone 1800 645 199 or (08) 8952 5800
Fax (08) 8953 0295
Email: visinfo@tourismca.asn.au
http://www.centralaustraliantourism.com/

There are several interesting sites to visit at Arltunga.

As You walk around this deserted goldfield, it is easy to see the debris of normal life for these desert dwelling people. Old pieces of meat safes, pieces of rusted wire, rusted cans and pieces of broken glass litter the ground. None of these are of any great importance but each little shard is reminder of the people who once lived and worked here.

• The Visitor Centre is a good starting point. An Information Centre has been built at the town site with interpretive displays, excellent photographs and plenty of information about the early history of the area including detailed descriptions of the mining techniques which were employed in this dry, desert environment. It is worth a visit to learn more about this important place in the Central Australian history.
• The Government Works has the most intact buildings of the historical reserve which can be visited with a 250m circuit walk, including the:
• Gold Battery where ore was crushed.
• Cyanide Works where quartz ore was processed to extract the elusive gold.
• Manager’s and Assayer’s Residence. Compare the government officials’ accommodation to that of the miners which can be seen elsewhere in the Reserve.
• Post Office, Blacksmith Shop, Gold Room and offices.
• From here it is a short walk of 1.5 km (20 - 30 minutes) to the Police Station. The walk along the creek bed is pleasant but the walk back along the road is much longer and of little interest. It’s better to use the creek to walk both ways.
• The Police Station was built in 1912 and was reconstructed in 1985. You can step into the gaol to feel what it was like to have been a prisoner.
• The Two-head Stamp Battery erected by the McIntyre family in the late 1950’s to crush White Range ore is near the Police Station.
• At the MacDonnell Range Reef Mine is a 900m self guided walk through this old mine where You can see the seams of quartz that may contain gold. Arltunga had very few underground mines. Just make sure You take a torch.
• The Golden Chance Mine has a 1.7km self guided walk. There is one of the ‘dry stone’ miners huts here as well as the mine construction. A short 200 m climb to the top of the hill rewards you with a spectacular panoramic view of the Arltunga Goldfields.
• The Crossroads area was chosen as a township site for Arltunga in the 1900’s and the remains of the bakehouse and the site of the Glencoe Hotel are all that remain. Also here is the Crossroads Cemetery where You can see the graves of some of the early miners including James Woodford and what is believed to be the grave of William Smith who worked the Great Western Mine.
• At Joker Gorge there is a 200m self guided walk which has some good examples of early stone buildings, which were associated with the Joker Mine and include an interesting Roundhouse. The Joker Mine itself is a further 200m uphill. If you are quiet here, you may see Black-footed Rock-wallabies.
• There is a 600m return walk at the Great Western Mine, the second most productive mine at White Range, which produced 600 ounces of gold. There are the remains of the miners stone buildings, as well as wooden buildings left from later miners that have re-worked the area.
• The White Range Cemetery rewards visitors with excellent views of the surrounding country on the walk to the site. Here lie local pioneers including Joseph Hale who first found gold in the area in 1887, Henery Luce who discovered the reef gold of White Range in 1897, as well as other prominent miners and citizens. A short walk to the hill behind the cemetery reveals the extensive White Range Open-cut Mine that was commissioned in 1990 and closed again in 1991.
• At the Arltunga Bush Hotel there is a campground with good facilities. This is an excellent base to explore the local area.

It was surveyor and explorer David Lindsay and his party that caused the start of Central Australia's first mining rush when he found what he thought were rubies in the sandy bed of the Hale River in 1886. The site of this find was named Ruby Gap for obvious reasons. By May 1887 there were over 200 people in the area prospecting for rubies. At the beginning of the rush European buyers were very excited, but as the market was flooded, buyers began questioning the quality of the rubies. By June 1888, it was found that the gems were merely high grade garnets, nowhere near as valuable as rubies, and Central Australia's 'ruby boom' quickly collapsed. This did however lead to the Arltunga Goldfields being discovered in 1887 and the beginning of Central Australia’s rapid early settlement and the founding of the town of Alice Springs.

Arltunga Goldfield was found in 1887 by prospectors who had come to the area after the rubies. The first gold was found near Paddy’s Rockhole, known as ‘Annurra ntinga’ by the Eastern Arrernte people and means smelly water. To the early miners this sounded like ‘Arltunga’ and the name was adopted for the whole goldfield. Soon Central Australia’s first industry based settlement followed. The South Australian Government saw great promise in the goldfield and commissioned David Lindsay to survey the town of Stuart, now Alice Springs, to be a supply base for the goldfield. Because of the constant shortage of water, dry area methods of gold recovery had to be employed. Instead of panning or sluicing like their southern counterparts, the miners used the method known as dry blowing, which used sieves and the wind or a bellows to separate the alluvial gold from creek sands and gravel. Gold-bearing quartz, extracted from the soft schist rocks were crushed and treated using the same method.

The harsh conditions, with little water and the extreme isolation meant the miners and their families had a very hard life. The trip from Oodnadatta, walking alongside the Overland Telegraph Line to Alice Springs for 400km, and then 120km along the East MacDonnell Ranges to the goldfield would take more than a week and usually longer. All food and supplies had to be brought this way. The shortage of water meant that almost no fruit or vegetables were grown on the field and very little feed for stock or cartage animals caused the transport prices to be very high. At its peak, the population reached around 300, but this varied with the seasons.

By 1896 the alluvial gold had almost all been recovered. When rich reef gold was discovered at nearby White Range, though the tough quartzite rock was much harder, the gold yields were greater and the future of the field really began to look promising, so the miners petitioned the South Australian Government for a Gold Battery and Cyanide Works. In 1898, the Government Battery and Cyanide Works began crushing and treating the miners ore, taking some of the hard work out of dry blowing and hand dollying (crushing). For more information about the gold extraction processes used at Arltunga, visit www.nt.gov.au/nreta/parks/find/pdf/arltunga_gold_extraction.pdf. The Government Battery area included offices, a battery shed, assay and bullion rooms and residences. Originally these buildings stood at Claraville to the north but due to shortages in materials they were dismantled and rebuilt at Arltunga.

The Arltunga Goldfields looked like becoming a big concern and many investors and miners dreamt of large company owned mines. But the 1890’s drought put a stranglehold on the field, wells dried up and starving horse teams became too weak to cart ore to the gold battery. Then in 1901 the boiler at the Government Battery burst, leaving the miners with no ore crusher for several months. The miners were forced to live on borrowed money and many left the field. In 1903 a short lived gold rush to nearby Winneckie Depot helped save Arltunga for a short time, drawing several hundred newcomers to the area. Then in 1905 the township was surveyed at the crossroads and it became the commercial centre of Arltunga, with a well, store and a hotel. As is often the case, the town came too late as the field began to wane, as gold became harder to find and the miners moved on. By 1913 the Arltunga Gold Battery had closed. Since the First World War there have been attempts to reopen the goldfield, but none of them ever amounted to much. During the Depression of the 1930’s a rush of more than a hundred miners was as close as Arltunga could get to its heyday. The White Range area was reworked again in the 1950s, and a few mining companies have looked at the area since, but the gold remains unviable. During World War 2 the Catholic Mission for Aboriginal people in Alice Springs moved to Arltunga. The Mission they set up was called Little Flower Mission and its approximately 200 residents lived there until 1953, when they moved to the Santa Teresa Mission, further south of Alice Springs.

In 1977 the Arltunga Goldfields were declared as a Historical Reserve with ongoing research and conservation work to preserve historical sites. The Historical Reserve represents one of the first major settlements in Central Australia. In many places on the reserve there are well preserved miners buildings. These structures at Arltunga are mostly made from stone. Usually schist and quartzite rocks were chosen and stacked together to form dry walls, while some were cemented with mud or lime mortar. Other buildings were made from timber or corrugated iron and some were just canvas tents. Several innovations in design to cope with the hot climates in the region are represented on the goldfield. Some of the buildings were partially dugout, dug into the ground for insulation and orientated towards the cooler south-easterly winds, a technique commonly found in opal mining towns like Coober Pedy, White Cliffs and Andamooka. There is one building that even had an underground vent system to feed cool breezes into the storage room. Sadly there is very little written history of the buildings at Arltunga and the people that inhabited them.