Renner Springs is a location in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

of Australia. It is in the heart of the

Barkly Tableland The Barkly Tableland is a region in the Central East of the Northern Territory, extending into Western Queensland. The region was named after Sir Henry Barkly. The epithet "Tableland" is inaccurate, since the region is neither elevated relative ...

s cattle country, and the town promotes itself as "The Heart of the Beef Country". The tiny settlement is on the

Stuart Highway Stuart Highway is a major Australian highway. It runs from Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin, in the Northern Territory, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in South Australia; it has a distance of . Its northern and souther ...

, north of the intersection of the

Barkly Highway The Barkly Highway is a national highway in Queensland and the Northern Territory in Australia. It is the only sealed road between Queensland and the Northern Territory. The highway is named after the Barkly Tableland, which in turn was named b ...

and

Tennant Creek Tennant Creek () is a town located in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is the Northern Territory#Cities and towns, seventh largest town in the Northern Territory, and is located on the Stuart Highway, just south of the intersection with ...

. It is 662 kilometres from

Alice Springs Alice Springs () is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; it is the third-largest settlement after Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and Palmerston, Northern Territory, Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William ...

, the largest town in the

Outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than Australian bush, the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastli ...

, and 820 km from Darwin. Renner Springs is usually regarded as the border between the tropical

Top End The Top End of Australia's Northern Territory is a geographical region encompassing the northernmost section of the Northern Territory, which aside from the Cape York Peninsula is the northernmost part of the Australian continent. It covers a ...

and the temperate

Red Centre Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and ...

regions.

History

Like so many places along the Stuart Highway, it owes its origins to the

Australian Overland Telegraph Line The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was an electrical telegraph system for sending messages the between Darwin, in what is now the Northern Territory of Australia, and Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Completed in 1872 (with a li ...

. It was named after Frederick Renner, who was dispensing medical advice to the team working on the telegraph line when they passed through the springs in 1872. In 1877, Renner saw a flock of birds while working on the telegraph line and found that the birds were drawn to this particular area by the natural springs, which was later named Mud Springs. These freshwater springs, which bubble up from underground, helped the area surrounding Renner Springs achieve its importance because they provided water to the area. Lake Woods is just north of the town, near Elliott and Newcastle Waters, Northern Territory.

Roadhouse

Established in the 1950s, the Renner Springs Desert Hotel/Motel also has gas, a bar and restaurant, game room and limited Internet access. A caravan park and shaded camp sites are also available. The roadhouse building is an old army hut relocated after World War II from the army's staging camp 50 km away at

Banka Banka Station Banka Banka Station is a location in the Northern Territory of Australia, 100 kilometres north of Tennant Creek along the Stuart Highway. The historic cattle station was the first operational pastoral lease in this region, and a supply camp duri ...

, which dates from 1885.

Attractions

Churchill's Head Rock

Churchill's Head Rock is on the old Stuart Highway 78 km south of Renner Springs. The rock, on the east of the old highway, looks vaguely like a profile of

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...

. In order to make the image more persuasive, someone has stuck a piece of piping where the mouth should be so that the profile appears to be smoking a rather large cigar.

Attack Creek

11 km south of Renner Springs is a monument marking the place where on 25 June 1860,

John McDouall Stuart John McDouall Stuart (7 September 18155 June 1866), often referred to as simply "McDouall Stuart", was a Scottish explorer and one of the most accomplished of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to tra ...

, on his second attempt to cross Australia, was confronted by

Warumungu people The Warumungu (or Warramunga) are a group of Aboriginal Australians of the Northern Territory. Today, Warumungu are mainly concentrated in the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Warumungu language calls Alice Springs ''Warm Springs'', a ...

, after which he named it Attack Creek.

Temperatures

Renner Springs has high summer temperatures. The summer average maximum is about 35 °C. The summer low is about 24 °C. Renner Springs has warm winter temperatures. The winter high temperature is about 20 °C. The winter low is about 5 °C.

References

Australian Explorer
{{authority control Towns in the Northern Territory Roadhouses in the Northern Territory