Online Catalogue last updated 17th of September 2023
As usual, it was hard work and rollicking adventure for the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party as they surveyed and built their last three highways across the deserts of Central Australia.
The Gary Highway was to head north for 350 kilometres from the Gunbarrel Highway to Gary Junction. Then a second highway of 650 kilometres was planned to join up with the West Australian road system near Marble Bar. A third would connect the road system near Ethel Creek to a point halfway along the Gary Highway, another 470 kilometres. And all this in one year's work! Len Beadell's team had to contend with flat tyres and broken gearboxes as well as all the natural difficulties of the outback country of seemingly never-ending sandhills and limitless spinifex plains, in searing heat, bitter cold and violent wind storms. But regardless of these conditions, the team maintained a much needed sense of humour and an awareness of taking part in an exciting venture. On one forward reconnaissance Beaded discovered a small group of
Aborigines who had never before seen a white person and also rediscovered two wells on the Canning Stock route. These and many other adventures of the outback are retold in Beadell's own lively and entertaining style.
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. 003259, 206 pages, ISBN 1863024050, $25.00