|
The Gary Junction Road is an outback unsealed road in Australia built by Len Beadell as part of a network of roads for the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera, South Australia. In its original form, the Gary Junction Road ran from Liebig bore in the Northern Territory to Callawa Station in Western Australia. On present day maps, it is depicted as running from the Tanami Road (Narwietooma turnoff) to Gary Junction, just east of the Canning Stock Route, a distance of 852 kilometres. The road was named after Beadell's only son Gary. ==History== Beadell and his Gunbarrel Road Construction Party (GRCP) commenced work immediately after completing the Sandy Blight Junction Road in August 1960. Starting from Sandy Blight Junction, the first stage was built towards an existing bore track near Mount Liebig 180 km to the east (67 km west of Papunya). Liebig bore was reached on 16 September. The party then returned to Sandy Blight Junction to continue the western section, with the ultimate goal being Callawa Station near the north-west coast of Western Australia. Construction west of the junction began 5 October, and the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia was reached 12 October. Beadell took star sights and placed a signpost displaying the latitude and longitude to mark the border. The road progressed westward and reached the present site of Jupiter Well on 7 November. The location was about 330 km from Sandy Blight Junction. On 8 November the grader broke down with a major transmission failure. Further road making came to an abrupt halt, and a lengthy towing operation of 800 km back to Giles began, using the bulldozer to tow the grader, with the water trailer attached behind it. The average speed of the bulldozer train was 3 km per hour, with an estimate of about a month for the journey. Every two hours while the bulldozer was travelling, a halt for greasing the track rollers was required as well. This operation was scarcely under way when the cook's ration truck with all of its food supply caught fire and was burnt out on 12 November. Beadell was forced to make an emergency dash to Alice Springs to obtain replacement food, a return trip of around 3000 km. Meanwhile, the towing operation continued, and the team was reunited 10 km west of Sandy Blight Junction. The slow moving convoy reached Giles 26 November 1960. Completion of the Gary Junction Road was delayed by more than two years, and recommenced in 1963 after the GRCP had built the south to north Gary Highway. Construction began 18 May 1963 from Gary Junction east towards Jupiter Well to link up with the earlier stage. There was little difficulty in building the road to within a few kilometres of the well, but a large sand dune blocked the way. By using the Land Rover as an anchor, a four-wheel drive truck attached to a long winch cable was able to get up the dune, and the remaining vehicles were successively winched, including lastly the grader. A bulldozer was not part of the road making operation at this time. Jupiter Well was reached 25 May 1963. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gary Junction Road」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|