Gunbarrel Highway
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Sign on the Gunbarrel Highway, Western Australia |
The
Gunbarrel Highway is an isolated desert track in
Western Australia and the
Northern Territory. It consists of 1400km of washaways, heavy corrugations, stone, sand and flood plains, and runs from
Wiluna in the west to
Yulara (via Jackie Junction and Docker River) in the east. Some of the eastern section of the road is now named the Tjukaruru Road for the
Aboriginal people that live in this area.
The original Gunbarrel Highway connected Carnegie Station in Western Australia to Victory Downs just north of the Northern Territory/
South Australia border. This route is almost never used since some parts of it are abandoned or prohibited for tourist vehicles. The Gunbarrel as it is loosely defined nowadays runs from Wiluna to the
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park as described above, and includes the
Great Central Road.
The Gunbarrel Highway was the first road built as part of Australia's role in the weapons research facility called
Woomera; the
atomic bomb testing site in this area later named
Maralinga. The highway was surveyed and constructed under the direction of legendary bushman
Len Beadell, who was responsible for numerous other roads in Australia that opened up some of the most remote desert areas of the continent in the late
1940s and
1950s.
By any standard, this is a long and tough haul through very remote territory. The track varies from stony to sandy with corrugations, ruts, washaways and sometimes mud. Be totally self-sufficient with water, food and fuel (the longest distance between fuel outlets is 489 km, between Carnegie Station and
Warburton). See
wikitravel.org/en/Gunbarrel_Highway for more detail on traveling the Gunbarrel Highway.
Its name comes from
Len Beadell's
Gunbarrel Construction Team which opened up a big chunk of Australia's interior during the 1950s and 1960s.
*
Highways in Australia*
List of highways in Northern Territory
