  The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will provide high precision
time-series photometry for millions of stars with at least a half-hour cadence.
Of particular interest are the circular regions of 12-degree radius centered
around the ecliptic poles that will be observed continuously for a full year.
Spectroscopic stellar parameters are desirable to characterize and select
suitable targets for TESS, whether they are focused on exploring exoplanets,
stellar astrophysics, or Galactic archaeology. Here, we present spectroscopic
stellar parameters ($T_{\rm eff}$, $\log g$, [Fe/H], $v \sin i$, $v_{\rm
micro}$) for about 16,000 dwarf and subgiant stars in TESS' southern continuous
viewing zone. For almost all the stars, we also present Bayesian estimates of
stellar properties including distance, extinction, mass, radius, and age using
theoretical isochrones. Stellar surface gravity and radius are made available
for an additional set of roughly 8,500 red giants. All our target stars are in
the range $10<V<13.1$. Among them, we identify and list 227 stars belonging to
the Large Magellanic Cloud. The data were taken using the the High Efficiency
and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES, R $\sim 28,000$) at the
Anglo-Australian Telescope as part of the TESS-HERMES survey. Comparing our
results with the TESS Input Catalog (TIC) shows that the TIC is generally
efficient in separating dwarfs and giants, but it has flagged more than hundred
cool dwarfs ($T_{\rm eff}< 4800$ K) as giants, which ought to be high-priority
targets for the exoplanet search. The catalog can be accessed via
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/tess-hermes/ , or at MAST via
https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/tess-hermes/ .
