Extract date: 15/03/2025
| Name | Rum Jungle |
|---|---|
| Type Designation | Forest |
| Place Id | 21279 |
| Place Type | Feature |
| Status | Historical |
| Date Registered | |
| Location (Datum GDA94) | |
| Latitude: -13° 00' S (Decimal degrees -13.003977) | |
| Longitude: 130° 57' E (Decimal degrees 130.961572) | |
| Locality / Suburb | |
| Rum Jungle | |
| Local Government Area | |
| Coomalie Community Council | |
| History/Origin | This locality derived its name from the jungle and adjoining land which gained its name from an incident around March 1873, when John Lewiss teamsters, whilst carting stores from Southport, a small port town across the harbour from Palmerston (now Darwin), to the mining fields around Pine Creek, tapped a cask of rum and delayed the team for several days. The jungle, 38 kilometres south of Southport was used as a teamsters camp because of the availability of good spring water and grass. The name Rum Jungle has been used since 1873 with the reporting of the death of Patrick Flynn at Rum Jungle. David Lithgow built and opened a hotel on a rise overlooking the creek and jungle in 1874 and with the construction of the railway from Palmerston (Port Darwin) to Pine Creek in the late 1880s, a gangers camp was established nearby. By 1890 the hotel ceased to be licensed and by the early 1900s all that existed to remind travellers of the existence of the hotel were footings and the rubbish dump. In 1948, the federal Government offered a reward for the discovery of uranium in Australia. Mr Jack White, a local Batchelor prospector and farmer, having viewed a BMR brochure on radioactive minerals reported the occurrence of uraniferous minerals in August 1949. The mining of uranium ore commenced in the Rum Jungle area in 1950 and continued until 1969, mostly by the open-cut mining method. |
| Date | Gazettal | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| (None Found) |