|
Maralinga To Emu Road
Maralinga to Emu Road is a remote unsealed outback track that links Maralinga to Emu in the western region of South Australia. It was built by Len Beadell for the Weapons Research Establishment of Salisbury, South Australia in 1955. History Following two successful atomic bomb tests at Emu in October 1953, a new site with better access for men and equipment was needed. Beadell had selected and surveyed the sites for Woomera and Emu, so he was asked once again to locate a more suitable site for further nuclear tests. He carried out a solo reconnaissance in the southern Great Victoria Desert, locating a suitable site north north-east of Watson siding on the Trans-Australian Railway. Beadell spent most of 1954 and the first half of 1955 carrying out survey work for the establishment of the township of what was to become Maralinga. When the work was completed, it was necessary to link the old bomb testing field and the new one by road, so Beadell carried out a survey north to Em ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Len Beadell
Leonard Beadell OAM BEM FIEMS (21 April 1923 – 12 May 1995) was a surveyor, road builder, bushman, artist and author, responsible for constructing over of roads and opening up isolated desert areas – some – of central Australia from 1947 to 1963. Born in West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Beadell is sometimes called "the last true Australian explorer". Early life Beadell's paternal grandparents came from England in the mid 1870s. His father Fred Algernon Beadell, was born in Sydney and mother Viola Pearl Mackay was from Townsville. They were married in Townsville on 19 December 1914, and soon moved to the Sydney area. A daughter Phyllis was born in 1917, followed by Len in April 1923. Beadell's primary education began at Gladesville Public School, Ryde in 1928 and continued at Burwood Public School in 1930, both suburbs of Sydney. At the suggestion of a school friend, Beadell joined the 1st Burwood Scout Troop where he met the scoutmaster John Richmond, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Beadell Highway
Anne Beadell Highway is an outback unsealed track linking Coober Pedy, South Australia, and Laverton, Western Australia, a total distance of . The track was surveyed and built by Len Beadell, Australian surveyor, who named it after his wife. The track passes through remote arid deserts and scrub territory of South Australia and Western Australia, which often have summer temperatures approaching . Sand dunes predominate for most of the track. Map and overview File:Anne Beadell Highway 0116.svg, The Anne Beadell Highway (depicted in purple) Map details as at 1972 The road was constructed to provide access for a series of surveys adding to the overall geodetic survey of unexplored parts of Australia. The information was required for rocket range projects at Woomera. Construction was completed in five stages, spanning nine years from 1953 to 1962. The first stage from Mabel Creek station near Coober Pedy, west towards Emu Field, was built in February and March 1953 to p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emu Field
Emu Field is located in the desert of South Australia, at (ground zero Totem I test). Variously known as Emu Field, Emu Junction or Emu, it was the site of the Operation Totem pair of nuclear tests conducted by the British government in October 1953. The site was surveyed by Len Beadell in 1952. A village and airstrip were constructed for the subsequent testing program. The site was supported from the RAAF Woomera Range Complex. Two British nuclear weapon tests were conducted at the site. ''Totem I'' was detonated on 15 October 1953 and ''Totem II'' was detonated on 27 October 1953. The devices were both sited on towers and yielded 9 kilotons and 7 kilotons respectively. The site was also used in September–October 1953 for some of the Kitten series of tests, which were conventional (rather than nuclear) explosions used to evaluate neutron initiators. It was later found that the radioactive cloud from the first detonation did not disperse as expected, and travelled north-ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maralinga
Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s. In January 1985 native title was granted to the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal Australian people, over some land, but around the same time, the McClelland Royal Commission identified significant residual nuclear contamination at some sites. Under an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia, efforts were made to clean up the site before the Maralinga people resettled on the land in 1995. The main community, which includes a school, is Oak Valley. There are still concerns that some of the ground is still contaminated, despite two attempts at cleanup. History Nuclear tests and cleanup Maralinga was the scene of UK nuclear testing and was contaminated with radioactive waste in the 1950s and early 1960s. Maralinga was surveyed by Len Beadell in the early 1950s. It followed the survey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eyre Western
In South Australia, one of the states of Australia, there are many areas which are commonly known by regional names. Regions are areas that share similar characteristics. These characteristics may be natural such as the Murray River, the coastline, desert or mountains. Alternatively, the characteristics may be cultural, such as common land use. South Australia is divided by numerous sets of regional boundaries, based on different characteristics. In many cases boundaries defined by different agencies are coterminous. Informal divisions Convention and common use has divided South Australia into a number of regions. These do not always have strict boundaries between them and have no general administrative function or status. Many of them correspond to regions used by various administrative or government agencies, but they do not always have the same boundaries or aggregate in the same way. The generally accepted regions are: * Adelaide Plains (the northern part is sometimes kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Of South Australia
The Government of South Australia, also referred to as the South Australian Government, SA Government or more formally, His Majesty’s Government, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of South Australia. It is modelled on the Westminster system of government, which is governed by an elected parliament. History Until 1857, the Province of South Australia was ruled by a Governor responsible to the British Crown. The Government of South Australia was formed in 1857, as prescribed in its Constitution created by the Constitution Act 1856 (an act of parliament of the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under Queen Victoria), which created South Australia as a self-governing colony rather than being a province governed from Britain. Since the federation of Australia in 1901, South Australia has been a state of the Commonwealth of Australia, which is a constitutional monarchy, and the Constitution of Australia regulates the state of South A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and second smallest state by population. It has a total of 1.8 million people. Its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second-largest centre, has a population of 33,233. South Australia shares borders with all of the other mainland states, as well as the Northern Territory; it is bordered to the west by Western Australia, to the north by the Northern Territory, to the north-east by Queensland, to the east by New South Wales, to the south-east by Victoria, and to the south by the Great Australian Bight.M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salisbury, South Australia
Salisbury is a northern suburb in Adelaide, South Australia. It is the seat of the City of Salisbury, and in the South Australian Legislative Assembly electoral district of Ramsay and the Australian House of Representatives division of Spence. The suburb is a service area for the City of Salisbury district, with an abundance of parklands, shops, cafes and restaurants. Parabanks Shopping Centre is also located in Salisbury, which includes Woolworths, Coles and Big W as its signature retailers. History Salisbury was founded when John Harvey began selling town allotments in 1848, from land he had purchased along the Little Para River in the previous year. The town was named after Salisbury in the United Kingdom which was close to his wife's hometown. There is a Wiltshire Street near Park Terrace in the city centre, parallel to John Street. Salisbury started its life as a service centre for the surrounding wheat and hay farms. Salisbury Post Office opened around March 1850. Salisbu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Victoria Desert
The Great Victoria Desert is a sparsely populated desert ecoregion and interim Australian bioregion in Western Australia and South Australia. History In 1875, British-born Australian explorer Ernest Giles became the first European to cross the desert. He named the desert after the then-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. In 1891, David Lindsey's expedition traveled across this area from north to south. Frank Hann was looking for gold in this area between 1903 and 1908. Len Beadell explored the area in the 1960s. Location and description The Great Victoria is the largest desert in Australia, and consists of many small sandhills, grassland plains, areas with a closely packed surface of pebbles (called desert pavement or gibber plains), and salt lakes. It is over wide (from west to east) and covers an area of from the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia to the Gawler Ranges in South Australia. The Western Australian mulga shrublands ecoregion lies to the west, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trans-Australian Railway
The Trans-Australian Railway, opened in 1917, runs from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, crossing the Nullarbor Plain in the process. As the only rail freight corridor between Western Australia and the eastern states, the line is strategically important. The railway includes the world's longest section of completely straight track. The inaugural passenger train service was known as the ''Great Western Express''; later, it became the ''Trans-Australian''. , two passenger services use the line, both of them experiential tourism services: the ''Indian Pacific'' for the entire length of the railway, and ''The Ghan'' between Port Augusta and Tarcoola, where it leaves the line to proceed north to Darwin. History In 1901, the six Australian colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. At that time, Perth, the capital of Western Australia, was isolated from the remaining Australian states by thousands of miles of desert terrain and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gunbarrel Road Construction Party
The Gunbarrel Road Construction Party (GRCP) was the name bestowed upon a team of road builders by Len Beadell in 1955, after which the well known outback track Gunbarrel Highway was named. Over a period of eight years, Beadell and the GRCP built more than 6,000 kilometres of dirt roads in remote areas of central Australia for the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera, South Australia. By the time they had completed their work in December 1963, the GRCP had built eleven major roads in twenty-four separate stages across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Background In Len Beadell's book ''Beating about the Bush'', he explained how the name of the party was derived. During many kilometres of driving around sand-ridges and spinifex hummocks, the mental picture of a corkscrew kept appearing before his mind's eye, when the word "straight" described what was desired. Suddenly the word "gunbarrel" representing something very straight materialised in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Nuclear Tests At Maralinga
Between 1956 and 1963, the United Kingdom conducted seven nuclear tests at the Maralinga site in South Australia, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area about north west of Adelaide. Two major test series were conducted: Operation Buffalo in 1956 and Operation Antler the following year. Approximate weapon yields ranged from . The Maralinga site was also used for minor trials, tests of nuclear weapons components not involving nuclear explosions. Kittens were trials of neutron initiators; Rats and Tims measured how the fissile core of a nuclear weapon was compressed by the high explosive shock wave; and Vixens investigated the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. The minor trials, numbering around 550, ultimately generated far more contamination than the major tests. Operation Buffalo consisted of four tests; One Tree () and Breakaway () were detonated on towers, Marcoo () at ground level, and the Kite () was released by a Royal Air Force (RAF) Vickers Valia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> Government Of South Australia")
