The Gunbarrel Road Construction Party (GRCP) was the name bestowed upon a team of road builders by

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 fr ...

in 1955, after which the well known outback track

Gunbarrel Highway The Gunbarrel Highway is an isolated desert track in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. It consists of about of washaways, heavy corrugations, stone, sand and flood plains. The Gunbarrel Highway connects Victory D ...

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 Woomera, unofficially Woomera village, refers to the domestic area of RAAF Base Woomera. Woomera village has always been a Defence-owned and operated facility. The village is located on the traditional lands of the Kokatha people in the Far ...

. 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 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 ...

, the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

and

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

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 his mind, so on return to camp, he announced to his team that they were to be known as the ''Gunbarrel Road Construction Party''. This was well received by the men, and the name passed into folklore. He later joked, "It didn't matter that when we got to the sandhills, a more suitable name might have been 'The Corkscrew Road Construction Party'". Beadell's usual method for building roads was to carry out a solo reconnaissance in his Land Rover, bush-bashing through virgin scrub, referring to a magnetic compass for direction, and the vehicle's odometer for distance. When he had determined a feasible path he would return to camp and guide a bulldozer by standing on top of his vehicle while flashing reflected sunlight from a mirror towards the driver. Beadell joked that the bulldozer driver followed the flashing mirror for eight years and never caught it. If large sandhills intervened, flares fired from a pistol were substituted. Some reconnaissance forays took many days, hundreds of kilometres, and usually several punctured tyres. He used a

theodolite A theodolite () is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but it is also used extensively for building an ...

to observe stars, the sun and the moon to accurately calculate his position which he termed an "astrofix". If the path ahead consisted of thick scrub or trees, the bulldozer made the first pass with the blade above ground level to knock the scrub down, then returned with blade lowered to clear the debris. The next pass partially overlapped the first to widen the road. A grader would then make up to five passes over the freshly cleared track, followed by a "cherry-picker" to remove sticks, roots, or stones by hand. Beadell had built two roads prior to the formation of the GRCP. The first was from Mabel Creek station (west of

Coober Pedy Coober Pedy () is a town in northern South Australia, north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is ...

) to

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 Octob ...

(Feb-Mar 1953), the second was from

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 Aborig ...

to Emu Field (Aug-Sep 1955). Bill Lloyd was then a member of his road building team. In November 1955 the first members of the GRCP, all hand-picked by Beadell, rendezvoused near Coober Pedy with their vehicles and equipment to start work. The convoy consisted of three trucks, two Land Rovers, a grader, a bulldozer and several trailers. Led by Len Beadell, the convoy made its way to Victory Downs just over the border in the Northern Territory to begin construction of the Gunbarrel Highway, the first east-west road across central Australia.

Personnel

The original personnel of the GRCP were: * Len Beadell - Surveyor and Leader * Doug Stoneham -

D8 Bulldozer The Caterpillar D8 is a medium track-type tractor designed and manufactured by Caterpillar. Though it comes in many configurations, it is usually sold as a bulldozer equipped with a detachable large blade and a rear ripper attachment. Histor ...

* Scotty Boord - Grader * Bill Lloyd - Supply driver * Rex Flatman - General mechanic * Willy Appleton - Cherry-picker * Paul Christensen - Cook There were subsequent changes in the composition of the GRCP which included Frank Quinn as supply driver, Shorty Williams as grader driver, Eric Graefling as Cherry-picker. Two other cooks were briefly employed, Cyril Koch and Tom Roberts, but Paul Christensen was the longest serving cook. On completion of road building in November 1963, the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party's grader, a Caterpillar No 12 Model S8T, was retired from duty at

Giles Weather Station Giles Weather Station (also referred to as Giles Meteorological Station or Giles) is located in Western Australia near the Northern Territory border, about west-south-west of Alice Springs and west of Uluru. It is the only staffed weather sta ...

. It was driven to Giles by Doug Stoneham when the

Talawana Track The Talawana Track is a remote unsealed track that runs between Windy Corner on the Gary Highway and the Marble Bar Road in Western Australia, a distance of 596 kilometres. The majority of it was built by Len Beadell and the Gunbarrel Road Co ...

was finished. Doug Stoneham had left the GRCP in 1960 to get married, but returned in 1963 to operate the grader. In 1988 Len Beadell drove the grader into its final home for preservation, a steel cage. The D8 Caterpillar bulldozer that was used to build the Gunbarrel Highway was left at Carnegie Station by Doug Stoneham when the road was finished. Other D7 cable bulldozers were used to build subsequent roads. The whereabouts of the D8 dozer was a mystery for some years, but when an article in

Australian Geographic Australian Geographic is a media business that produces the ''Australian Geographic'' magazine, ''DMag'' magazine, specialist book titles, travel guides, diaries and calendars and online media. It published editions of the Australian Encyclopa ...

was published in 1995, its owner Bill McLay from Perth WA recognised a photograph of it. Dick Smith the founder of Australian Geographic, purchased it from Mr McLay.

References

{{reflist Australian outback tracks Roads built by Len Beadell

Background

Personnel

See also

References