Last of the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party roads to be made by Len Beadell and his merry men was the 450km long Talawana Track, pushing westward from Windy Corner (on the Gary Highway) to ruins of the Talawana Homestead, near the present Balfour Downs Station.
We drove approximately half of the Talawana Track with a group of fellow travellers over two days in late July 22, from Windy Corner to the turn-off into Karlamilyi (Rudall River) National Park.
Month: July 2022
Gary Highway
A convoy of vehicles led by the legendary Ron Moon ran part way up the Gary Highway (Everard Junction to Windy Corner) in late July 2022 – we took two days to traverse the often rutted, overgrown and narrow track.
We touched on the Gary Highway again a few weeks later, passing through Gary Junction when travelling sole and homebound from WA to the NT across the Gary Junction Road.
David Carnegie Road
In July ’22 a group of us traversed the David Carnegie Road, a roughly formed track running south-north between Tjukayirla Roadhouse on the GCR through to the Gunbarrel Highway at Mangkili Claypan.
The ~250km long road is a great outback drive that approximately follows part of the route taken by explorer and gold prospector David Carnegie during his 1896 expedition from Coolgardie to Hall’s Creek.
Anne Beadell Highway
The Anne Beadell Highway (ABH), named by Len after his wife, formed a critical east-west link in the Woomera range road network and formed the back bone off which many of his outback roads linked. Traversing roughly 1,325km of South and West Australian desert country the ABH runs through some of the most remote, desolate and waterless terrain on the Australian continent – this blog covers our 2022 traverse of this majestic country.
South Australian outback treasures – gold, wool, opals and … rockets!!
After resupplying and refuelling at Ceduna the opening days of our atomic roads adventure were spent getting from the South Australia coast to the first of our Len Beadell roads, the Anne Beadell Highway which starts (or ends) at Coober Pedy. Along the way we would get to glimpse some of the SA outback’s treasures and quirks.
Half way there
Starting point for my foray across the atomic roads network built by the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party was the South Australian coastal town of Ceduna, roughly 2,500km from home.
I allowed myself four days for the trip that would take in some great Australian outback areas including the Darling River run, across the western NSW mining area of Broken Hill and across the scenic Eyre Peninsular.
Back to the desert
For some time I’ve toyed with the idea of traversing some of the roads constructed in the 1950s and 60s to service the British atomic testing program – when half way across the Simpson Desert on our recent trip we decided to make the trip a reality and started making plans to journey coast to coast through the very heart of Australia’s most remote deserts on the Len Beadell road network.
Crossing the Dead Heart
In 1939 Cecil Madigan led a nine-man scientific expedition on camels across the northern sector of the Sandridge Desert.
After wet weather and COVID restrictions scuttled our plans to follow Madigan’s route in 2021 we were now lined up for another crack at the desert crossing, along with most of our travelling companions from last attempt.