Howard Springs is a locality in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

. It is SE of the Darwin CBD. Its

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a State (administrative division), state, province, divi ...

is the

Litchfield Municipality The Litchfield Council is a local government area of the Northern Territory of Australia on the eastern and southeastern outskirts of the Darwin-Palmerston urban area. The municipality covers an area of , and was created by the Northern Territ ...

. The suburb is mostly a rural area, but has been experiencing strong growth in population and development. From 2020, it has housed a major quarantine facility.

Early history

European settlement of the area began in 1864. The stream which commenced with a spring was named for Frederick Howard in 1865 by the survey party of

B. T. Finniss Boyle Travers Finniss (18 August 1807 – 24 December 1893) was the first premier of South Australia, serving from 24 October 1856 to 20 August 1857. Early life Finniss was born at sea off the Cape of Good Hope, Southern Africa, and lived in ...

. Howard was the captain of a schooner and a hydrographer. Although first examined in 1921, Howard Springs in 1939 became the first major water supply area to service Darwin, at one time also known as Worgan Springs. Discharge was calculated to be every twenty-four hours. Later

Manton Dam Manton Dam is a small concrete arch dam on the Manton River, approximately south of Darwin, Northern Territory in Australia. The dam was originally constructed by the Department of Defence during the Second World War to provide a reliable supp ...

supplied water to Darwin with the onset of

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, but now most of Darwin's water supply comes from Darwin River Dam.

Uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

was located in the area in November 1952, but not in a workable form. The suburb is mostly a rural area, but has been experiencing strong growth in population and development. A primary school was erected in 1974. An accommodation facility named Manigurr-ma Village was built at Howard Springs in 2012 by Japanese energy company

Inpex INPEX (Invention and New Product Exposition) is America's largest invention trade show, held since 1985 and organized by the invention promotion firm InventHelp. The annual show is held each June in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. INPEX provides a fo ...

to accommodate up to 3500 temporary

fly-in fly-out Fly-in fly-out is a method of employing people in remote areas by flying them temporarily to the work site instead of relocating employees and their families permanently. It is often abbreviated to FIFO when referring to employment status. This is ...

construction workers on the Ichthys LNG gas plant. The facility was closed and abandoned in 2018.

COVID-19 quarantine facility

From early 2020, the abandoned accommodation facility became a quarantine facility for people returning to Australia from areas infected with

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, initially on 9 February 2020 from

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...

. The quarantine facility was run by the Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT). From later in 2020, the facility was a quarantine facility for people arriving from Victoria during the second lockdown of that state. From mid-October 2020 the quarantine facility was referred to as the Center for National Resilience, in anticipation of an agreement between the Northern Territory and Federal Governments in October 2020 for use of the camp for that purpose. From late October 2020, the quarantine facility was used for repatriating Australians from Europe and India. From May 2021, the Northern Territory Government began to gradually take over all operations from AUSMAT. Following the recommendations of a national review of hotel quarantine for a national quarantine centre, the commissioning of Howard Springs prompted demands for other quarantine facilities, which based on the Howard Springs model were approved to proceed for construction at Mickleham, Victoria in June, 2021; at Jandakot, Western Australia in August 2021, at Pinkinba, Brisbane, Queensland in mid-August 2021 and a separate state government built Queensland facility at Toowoomba in late August. Howard Springs and the first three of these run under Federal Government auspices (though operated by the relevant state or territory government) are all modelled on the Howard Springs camp and use the Centre for National Resilience name, on the basis of the Howard Springs camp's success in avoiding COVID-19 leaks.

References

External links

Place Names Committee
{{Litchfield Municipality Suburbs and Towns Suburbs of Darwin, Northern Territory Quarantine facilities in Australia