Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Natural Resource Topics

Agriculture - Statistics - Northern Territory

Northern Territory

Introduction

The Northern Territory covers 1,346,200 sq. km, has a coastline of 6,200 km, comprises 17.52% of the total area of Australia, and is nearly six times the size of Great Britain.

The climate of the Territory has two distinct seasons - the Wet Season, November to March when Darwin has an average annual rainfall of 1500 mm, and the Dry Season, when rainfall is only 25 mm. July is the Territory's coolest month when temperatures in Darwin range between 20 and 30 degrees. In August, the average maximum in Alice Springs is 22.5 degrees, cooling at night to lows of around zero.

The Arnhem Land Plateau is an ancient high rocky plain, with mountains and gorges. The best known canyon is a chain of thirteen separate chasms created by the Katherine River. The plateau was part of the land bridge across which the Aboriginals came to Australia more than 40,000 years ago. On the western edge of Arnhem Land lies the 6000 sq km Kakadu National Park . South of Katherine is the Tanami Desert which stretches over into Western Australia. The Simpson Desert dunes flow over into Queensland and South Australia. Most of the remaining Outback is mulga and spinifex semi-desert.

The Northern Territory's two main centres, Darwin and Alice Springs, are 1500 km apart. Darwin was virtually re-built after Cyclone Tracy in 1974, when 66 people died or were missing, and most of the town was destroyed. Alice Springs was originally a repeater station for the Overland Telegraph Service, and is now the centre for the outback cattle industry and an important tourist centre. The Overland Telegraph was a 2,900 km telegraph line from Port Augusta to Darwin opened in 1862. It needed 36,000 poles and 11 repeater stations to carry all Australia's overseas traffic. It operated for 27 years.

Originally, the Territory was part of New South Wales when that state's boundary extended to the 129th east meridian. In 1863 it was annexed to South Australia and did not come under Commonwealth control until 1911. In July, 1978, the Northern Territory attained self government.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data has been analysed by the Bureau of Rural Sciences using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available from the Australian Spatial Data Directory

Select one of the following Statistical Divisions to view information for that region:

The figures and text are reproduced with permission of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, © Commonwealth of Australia, 2000.

Statistics

Area of region (ha): 134,761,095.30

Area

Agroforestry

Berry Fruit

Cattle and Calves

Cereals excluding Rice

Citrus

Grapes

Legumes

Non-Cereal Forage Crops

Nuts

Oilseeds

Other Livestock

Other Non-Cereal Crops

Other Vegetables

Pastures

Pigs

Plantation Fruit

Poultry

Rice

Sales of Livestock

Stone Fruit

Further information

Please Note: Not all the selected data items are available for every year or for every statistical region.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data have been analysed by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia to report them using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available through the Australian Spatial Data Directory.

The subset includes 436 data items for plant production and 40 data items for livestock which were commonly available in the AgStats database over the 15 year period and each year for respondents having an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) above the cut-off of $22,500.

The data have been concorded by bringing data collected using different geographies to a consistent geographic base, being Version 2.6 Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries (ABS, 1996) and using the non-agricultural lands mask from the National Land and Water Resources Audit's National Landuse Map (1996/1997).

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