Friends of Newcastle Waters aim to revive ghost town once slated as North Australia's capital

In the remote Northern Territory, an abandoned hotel now hosts Wayne Kraft, who hears the echoes of a bustling past and leads a club named Mates of the Murranji to draw attention to Newcastle Waters. The settlement, once the only pub for hundreds of kilometres, was selected in 1926 to become the capital of a proposed North Australia, a plan driven by its strategic location on the Overland Telegraph and major cattle routes.

At its height, the town was a vital stop for drovers moving thousands of cattle from the Kimberley to Queensland via the treacherous Murranji Track. Aboriginal stockmen also played a crucial role, staging a 1966 strike for equal pay that predated the famous Wave Hill walk-off. By the late 1960s, improved roads and the rise of road trains rendered the stock routes obsolete, and the capital proposal was rescinded, leaving Darwin as the NT capital. A recent convoy of about 70 people, including former drover-turned-politician Roger Steele and NT Administrator David Connolly, gathered to commemorate the centenary of the capital selection, hoping to spark renewed interest in the ghost town.