Tarcoola (postcode 5710, elevation 204 m) is a town in the Far North of South Australia 416 km north-northwest of Port Augusta.
Tarcoola is taken from a non-local aboriginal language from an area around Tarcoola Station in NSW; it means river bend.
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Tarcoola Post Office opened on 18 August 1900 and the town was proclaimed on 21 February 1901.[1] The name was taken from the nearby Tarcoola Goldfields, which in turn had been named after Tarcoola the winner of the 1893 Melbourne Cup horse race, the year gold was discovered in the area. The horse Tarcoola had been raised on Tarcoola Station on the Darling River.
There were 2000 people living on the gold fields by 1900 and there was even a town plan surveyed just north of the junction in 1915. In the present, only the hotel and a few houses remain in use.
The original Tarcoola goldfields are long closed, however there is now new exploration for minerals in the wider area, including the Challenger Mine. Tarcoola is now best known as the junction of the Sydney-Perth and Adelaide-Darwin railways.
The town is served by trains run by Great Southern Railway, The Ghan, running between Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin and the Indian Pacific, running between Sydney and Perth. Both trains run once a week all year, and twice a week at various times.[2][3] The mail for Tarcoola arrives by train.
Tarcoola is in the South Australian House of Assembly electoral district of Giles and the Australian House of Representatives Division of Grey.
Tarcoola has a desert climate with hot, dry summers and mild winters and sparse rainfall throughout the year.
| Climate data for Tarcoola Airport | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 48.0 (118.4) |
47.4 (117.3) |
43.0 (109.4) |
39.5 (103.1) |
32.0 (89.6) |
28.7 (83.7) |
28.0 (82.4) |
33.5 (92.3) |
39.0 (102.2) |
42.9 (109.2) |
46.5 (115.7) |
47.0 (116.6) |
48.0 (118.4) |
| Average high °C (°F) | 36.9 (98.4) |
35.4 (95.7) |
31.7 (89.1) |
27.0 (80.6) |
22.6 (72.7) |
18.8 (65.8) |
18.8 (65.8) |
21.1 (70.0) |
25.1 (77.2) |
27.8 (82.0) |
31.3 (88.3) |
33.5 (92.3) |
27.5 (81.5) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 19.8 (67.6) |
19.4 (66.9) |
16.0 (60.8) |
12.2 (54.0) |
8.0 (46.4) |
5.1 (41.2) |
4.6 (40.3) |
5.6 (42.1) |
9.0 (48.2) |
11.6 (52.9) |
15.5 (59.9) |
17.2 (63.0) |
12.0 (53.6) |
| Record low °C (°F) | 5.6 (42.1) |
10.0 (50.0) |
6.1 (43.0) |
1.3 (34.3) |
0.0 (32.0) |
−3.8 (25.2) |
−2.7 (27.1) |
−3.1 (26.4) |
0.5 (32.9) |
1.0 (33.8) |
5.0 (41.0) |
8.4 (47.1) |
−3.8 (25.2) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 13.4 (0.528) |
20.2 (0.795) |
13.6 (0.535) |
11.4 (0.449) |
9.7 (0.382) |
13.7 (0.539) |
10.4 (0.409) |
13.4 (0.528) |
11.7 (0.461) |
18.6 (0.732) |
20.8 (0.819) |
25.4 (1) |
182.7 (7.193) |
| Source: [4] | |||||||||||||
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