Online Catalogue last updated 17th of September 2023
When your grader breaks down in the middle of the desert, there's only one thing you can do — attach it to your bulldozer and tow it back to civilisation.
For Len Beadell's team, that meant a journey of 800 kilometres at three kilometres an hour - the longest towing operation ever in the history of Central Australia. The party hitched up their "train" and set off back along the road they had just built. But while they were all set for a long and arduous journey, the last thing they expected was for their ration truck to melt. This had its disadvantages; but as Frank Quinn remarked, it was the best entertainment they'd had for a year. It was just the start of a series of incidents which were to mark this journey out as one of the most eventful episodes in the team's experience. Returning slowly over the road, Len Beaded recounts in his own colourful style the outstanding events in its construction, the excitement and surprises that lay in store for them in opening up this extraordinary country: fantastic piles of boulders, mountain peaks and some of the most unusual flora and fauna on the earth's surface.
LEN BEADELL, who has been called the last of the true Australian explorers, was born on a farm at West Pennant Hills, NSW, in 1923. As a surveyor and road builder he has worked all over the Australian outback from Arnhem Land to the Gibson Desert. In 1958 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for his work in building the Gunbarrel Highway across Central Australia. In 1987 he was made a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Mining Surveyors (Aust.) and the following year was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. The author of six best-selling books, he is married with three children, all of whom have features in outback Australia named after them.Code No. 003257, 192 pages, ISBN 1864367180, $25.00