Harts Range, officially registered as Hart Range, is a town in the

Northern Territory of Australia 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 ...

located on the

Plenty Highway The Plenty Highway is a outback mostly unsealed road in the Northern Territory of Australia between the Stuart Highway and north-western Queensland. Route description The road begins at a turnoff from the Stuart Highway north of Alice Spring ...

by road northeast of

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 ...

. It is also the name of a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

, after which it was named. It has also been referred to as Hart's Range. The Plenty River runs to the north of the range and the town.

History

The area is rich in minerals, and from the 1880s until 1960 the Harts Range area produced most of Australia's

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as ''perfect basal cleavage''. Mica is co ...

and one of these mines was the Spotted tiger mine. Many of the miners who arrived after the First World War (1918) were

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, with no experience of mining. After 1945 Italian immigration to the area increased, many of them with families. Mining occurred mainly in the Central Harts Range District, where the new migrants established settlements. The

and other transport services were developed as a result of these migrants' activities, and they formed the basis of

Central Australia 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 ...

's Italian community that still exists today. The

Governor of New South Wales The governor of New South Wales is the representative of the monarch, King Charles III, in the state of New South Wales. In an analogous way to the governor-general of Australia, Governor-General of Australia at the national level, the governor ...

, Lord Wakehurst, and his wife visited the area in March 1945. The miners used local

Aboriginal people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

for labour and for their knowledge. A 1950 newspaper article reports the value of mineral production from Hart's Range and the Plenty River as £79,321, but said that the profits had not flowed into the miners' wages, who had only received "no wage increase (other than the phoney cost of living adjustments made each quarter) since 1947". In 2005 the area was shortlisted as a potential site for a low-level and intermediate-level

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

storage and disposal facility, raising concerns that the local

hydrogeology Hydrogeology (''hydro-'' meaning water, and ''-geology'' meaning the study of the Earth) is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rock (geology), rocks of the Earth's crust (ge ...

could result in spills contaminating the ground water.

Geology and geography

The basement rocks of the Harts Range group were formed in the lower to middle

Proterozoic Eon The Proterozoic ( ) is the third of the four geologic eons of Earth's history, spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8 Mya, and is the longest eon of Earth's geologic time scale. It is preceded by the Archean and followed by the Phanerozoic ...

, and have undergone complex metamorphic heating and deformation events. Later, in an orogenic event during the

Cambrian Period The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordovici ...

, plutonic igneous activity generated magma of granitic composition, and in the final stages of

crystallisation Crystallization is a process that leads to solids with highly organized atoms or molecules, i.e. a crystal. The ordered nature of a crystalline solid can be contrasted with amorphous solids in which atoms or molecules lack regular organization ...

pegmatite A pegmatite is an igneous rock showing a very coarse texture, with large interlocking crystals usually greater in size than and sometimes greater than . Most pegmatites are composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica, having a similar silicic c ...

s were intruded into the adjacent basement rocks. Although the granite pluton has not been exposed by erosion, the pegmatites which contain

muscovite Muscovite (also known as common mica, isinglass, or potash mica) is a hydrated phyllosilicate mineral of aluminium and potassium with formula KAl2(Al Si3 O10)( F,O H)2, or ( KF)2( Al2O3)3( SiO2)6( H2O). It has a highly perfect basal cleavage y ...

, or white mica, were mined for mica from the 1890s to 1960. The former mica mines at Mount Palmer are now abandoned, and popular as a

fossicking In Australia, New Zealand and Cornwall, fossicking is prospecting, especially when carried out as a recreational activity. This can be for gold, precious stones, fossils, etc. by sifting through a prospective area. In Australian English and New Z ...

area.

Demographics

Most of the town's population are of Aboriginal descent, residing in the nearby community of Atitjere.

Recreation and events

Since 1947, each year an annual

racing In sports, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific g ...

meet, the "Harts Range Races" has been held at the Harts Range Racecourse on the Picnic Day long weekend. The event has grown to include

rodeo Rodeo () is a competitive equestrian sport that arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain and Mexico, expanding throughout the Americas and to other nations. It was originally based on the skills required of the working vaqu ...

, novelty, and family events in a three-day festival.

Facilities

Harts Range Police Station services the surrounding district, comprising remote

cattle station In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm ( station is equivalent to the American ranch), the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a '' grazier''. The largest cattle stati ...

s and Aboriginal communities. A transmitter for the

Jindalee Operational Radar Network The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) is an over-the-horizon radar (OHR) network operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) that can monitor air and sea movements across . It has a normal operating range of . The network is used ...

is located near Harts Range.

References

{{authority control Towns in the Northern Territory