Barkly Tablelands
Barkly Homestead
Barkly Homestead is located 210 kilometres from Tennant Creek at the junction of the Barkly and Tablelands Highways. The homestead is a popular stopover on the way to and from Queensland and offers fuel and supplies, motel accommodation, camping sites and a licensed bar and restaurant.
Overlander's Way
The Overlander’s Way tourism drive links Tennant Creek and Townsville via the outback towns of Camooweal, Mount Isa, Cloncurry, and Charters Towers. Otherwise known as the Barkly and Flinders Highways, it retraces the footsteps of pioneering cattlemen who drove their herds across the vast inland through the Barkly Tablelands.
The Barkly tablelands run east from Tennant Creek towards the Queensland border and are among the most important cattle grazing areas in the Northern Territory.
The tablelands are vast elevated plains of black soil with a covering of golden Mitchell grass, divided into some of the world’s largest cattle grazing properties. The Overlander’s Way (Barkly Highway) retraces the original route of early stockmen who drove their cattle from Queensland through the grazing lands in the Northern Territory.
This is a land of big skies and far horizons that enables you to truly appreciate the magnitude of the outback. Perhaps this is what Dorothy Mackellar had in mind when she wrote about ‘a wide brown land’ in her famous poem ‘My Country’.
The Barkly Homestead, at the junction of the Overlander’s Way and the Tablelands Highway, is the only service centre on the Barkly Tablelands. It is essentially a roadhouse offering fuel, basic supplies, motel accommodation and camping. Please ensure that you do not carry fruit or vegetables across the border.
Connells Lagoon Conservation Reserve is the only reserve in Australia established primarily for the conservation of Mitchell grassland communities. Connells Lagoon can be reached off the Tablelands Highway north-east of the Barkly Homestead. On the eastern boundary of Brunette Downs Station, the reserve covers an area of 259 square kilometres. A wide variety of birdlife and other animals can be found in this reserve. There are no facilities provided at this reserve.
Explore Tennant Creek & surrounds
