[1] It is located 29 kilometres (18 mi) SE of the Darwin CBD in the local government area of Litchfield Municipality.

[9] An accommodation facility named Manigurr-ma Village was built at Howard Springs in 2012 by Japanese energy company Inpex to accommodate up to 3500 temporary fly-in fly-out construction workers on the Ichthys LNG gas plant.

[citation needed] From early 2020, the abandoned accommodation site became a quarantine facility for people returning to Australia from areas infected with COVID-19, initially on 9 February 2020 from Wuhan.

[13] From mid-October 2020 the quarantine facility was referred to as the Centre for National Resilience, in anticipation of an agreement between the Northern Territory and Federal Governments in October 2020 for use of the camp for that purpose.

[16] Following the recommendations of a national review of hotel quarantine for a national quarantine centre,[17] the commissioning of Howard Springs prompted demands for other quarantine facilities, which based on the Howard Springs model were approved to proceed for construction at Mickleham, Victoria in June, 2021;[18] at Jandakot, Western Australia in August 2021,[19] at Pinkinba, Brisbane, Queensland in mid-August 2021[20] and a separate state government built Queensland facility at Toowoomba in late August.