Articles > Northern Territory Regional
As of December 1994, Northern Territory residents were offered 4 new designs on plates known as the ?regional? series. Each plate depicted a common feature of the particular region of the Northern Territory.
These plates were available for all private vehicles (excluding motorcycles
and trailers) and could be ordered in general issue numerical formats or
personalized/custom format. Existing combinations could also be remade on one
these new bases.
Regional issues were (and still are) available to all residents of N.T
regardless of their residential location. All plates used the ochre on white
colour scheme with a unifom design of a yellow sun in the center with a black
silhouette of the regional feature. No diamond separator was ever used.
The first 4 designs in this series were:
|
Barra Country Darwin NT
|
Featuring the silhouette of a Barramundi fish lunging out of water. The Barramundi is well known as Australia's best freshwater fighting fish and a popular sport and attraction for anglers to the region. Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory. | |
The Red Centre Alice Springs NT |
This plate features the silhouette of a camel and rider which is a major tourist attraction in the region. Alice Springs is the largest of the Outback towns. | |
|
Gold Country Tenant Creek NT
|
Featuring the silhouette of a miner with pick. Tennant Creek is an Outback town with a mining history it is fiercely proud of. This is where Australia?s last gold rush happened in the 1930s and is still being mined today. | |
| Cattle Country Katherine NT
|
This plate features the silhouette of a drover/jackaroo (aussie cowboy) on horseback. The Katherine region is a vast area of about 400,000 square km (the size of France) (or twice the size of Victoria) The land is primarily used for cattle farming. | |
| From 1995. two new plate designs were later added to this series bringing the total to six. The first of the two being: | ||
|
Best Kept Secret Arnhem Land NT
|
A silhouette of a ?pandanus palm? (a plant
native to the region) features on this plate. Arnhem Land is an area of 97
000 sq. km in the north-eastern corner of the Northern Territory. It is
controlled by the Northern Land Council and inhabited by local Aborigines. |
|
|
In July 1998 the 6th and final plate of this series was
issued: |
||
City Of The Future Palmerston NT
|
The silhouette of a gecko and the slogan were
chosen by the way of a competition held by the Palmerston City Council and
designed and won by two of the regions residents. Palmerston is a smaller city about 30 kms from the centre of Darwin. |
|
| From the year 2000
a smaller die size was used on these plates
|
|
|
|
Due to the the isolation and low population numbers of a
couple of these regions, some prove a little harder to find their way into
the hands of collectors, but it does provide a challenge to complete the
set! |
||
