Alice Springs to Tennant Creek road trip: Distance, drive time & bus
The Alice Springs to Tennant Creek drive along the Stuart Highway is 508km in distance, with a driving time of 5h8m. The best road trip attraction in this part of the Northern Territory is the Devil’s Marbles.
The drive from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek is a dull but necessary leg of a Stuart Highway road trip. If travelling from Alice Springs to Katherine, or Adelaide to Darwin, you’ll go from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek as part of the journey.
If you do just one thing in Alice Springs…
Make it a West MacDonnell Ranges day tour. It’ll show off many of the Red Centre’s most dramatic gorges, photogenic swimming holes, rugged landscapes and weird rock formations. (FIND OUT MORE).
Australia travel expert David Whitley.
Alice Springs offers hot air ballooning over the rugged outback, spectacular adventures in the West MacDonnell Ranges and quirky camel rides. For a bigger range of Alice Springs activities, step this way, and for Alice Springs accommodation, book here.
Book in advance for the best rates on Tennant Creek accommodation.
This road trip is a drive through pure Northern Territory outback. It’s often monotonously straight, and you’ll spend a good part of the Alice Springs to Tennant Creek road trip attempting to overtake caravans and road trains.
Alice Springs to Tennant Creek distance and driving time
The distance from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek is 508km. That makes for an Alice Springs to Tennant Creek driving time of around five hours and eight minutes. You’re pretty much have to pick somewhere to stay the night along the way or shortly afterwards, because the next leg of the journey from Tennant Creek to Katherine is even longer.
Best Alice Springs accommodation choices
These are the best Alice Springs accommodation picks:
- For a solid, relatively affordable motel: Elkira Court Motel.
- For villas, gardens and a lagoon-style pool: Desert Palms.
- For backpackers: Alice’s Secret Travellers Inn.
- For a kid-friendly holiday park: Discovery Parks Alice Springs.
- For business-friendly serviced apartments: Quest Alice Springs.
Worthwhile stops while driving to Tennant Creek from Alice Springs are few and far between. The most interesting of the Stuart Highway roadhouses along the journey is Wycliffe Well,
375km north of Alice Springs. Wycliffe Well is the self-styled UFO capital of Australia. The walls are covered in newspaper clippings about UFO sightings, and the holiday park is dotted with fibreglass little green men. It’s gloriously silly.
Click through for the next section – The Devil’s Marbles.