Mount Davies Road is a remote unsealed outback track which runs from Mount Davies ( Pipalyatjara) in the far north-west corner of

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 ...

to Anne's Corner on the

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. Th ...

397 kilometres to the south-east. It was built during 1956 and 1957 by the

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 buil ...

(GRCP) surveyed and led 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 ...

, 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 ...

Road survey

As a result of British atomic tests at

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 ...

in 1953, a weather station was needed to the far north-west of the test sites, to determine when suitable weather conditions existed for future tests. Len Beadell was given the task of selecting a team and constructing access roads from the test locality to the future weather station. The weather station was named Giles, after the explorer Ernest Giles who had explored that part of the remote inland. The access road began at Victory Downs in the Northern Territory and became known as the

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 ...

. The construction party reached

Mount Davies Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...

in the

Tomkinson Ranges The Tomkinson Ranges is a mountain range in the northwest corner of South Australia. The range consists of sandstone hills, surrounded by spinifex grasslands. The range was named after politician Samuel Tomkinson (1816–1900) by the explorer W ...

at the north-west corner of South Australia in December 1955. In June 1956, after the Gunbarrel Highway had reached Giles, and the airstrip was laid out, Beadell returned to Mount Davies to begin a solo reconnaissance towards the south-east to survey a route for another road to link up with Emu Field. There had been recent rains which made the going tough, and early in the journey he suspected that a front axle of his four-wheel drive vehicle was broken due to slow progress in moist sand. He continued on as he had seen a cluster of rocky mountains in the distance, Mount Lindsay, which was useful as a survey trig point. The mountains reminded him of

Ayers Rock Uluru (; pjt, Uluṟu ), also known as Ayers Rock ( ) and officially gazetted as UluruAyers Rock, is a large sandstone formation in the centre of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, southwest of Alice Springs. ...

by the smooth rounded shape of the formation. After scaling the highest point he noticed water in a creek below, which he later explored from the Land Rover. The vehicle sank into soft sand and it took him until the next day to extricate himself, as only the rear wheels were driving. He decided that the new road would pass by this feature due to the good supply of water. He pressed on through thick scrub, and was more than half way to the destination when he noticed that fuel usage was greater than normal because of the moist ground. He began to doubt if there was sufficient fuel left to make it Emu Field. The vehicle was equipped with a high frequency radio, so he was still able to contact his base, but suddenly the rear axle broke and further progress ceased with 110 kilometres to go. Beadell used his

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 ...

at night for astronomical observations, and calculated his exact location the next morning which he was able to pass to base via radio. It was a week before a rescue team arrived. The wrong parts had been brought, so the vehicle was left where it was. It was repaired at a later date, and the survey was able to be completed.

Road building

Beadell sign at Annes Corner Beadell returned to Mount Davies in July 1956 and led the GRCP with a bulldozer and grader back towards Emu Field, to begin construction of the new road. The supply truck and fitter's truck experienced mechanical problems early on, so they had to be towed by the grader until Beadell was able to drive to Giles to pick up vital spares, after they had been delivered by aircraft. Near Mt. Lindsay, the bulldozer became bogged in soft ground, and almost simultaneously the grader was bogged some distance away. It took two days of hard work to extricate both machines. Sites for a mobile meteorological station were surveyed at Mount Lindsay and Coffin Hill in August. In September, work was halted while British scientists visited Giles, and was not restarted until the following year in June 1957. A point on a previously made road 48 kilometres west of Emu Field was reached in July, with the corner named Anne's Corner, after Beadell's future wife. In 1958, work continued on the Gunbarrel Highway.

Kintore Avenue

Four years after the Mount Davies Road was completed, Beadell and the GRCP built a new road connecting the Gunbarrel Highway to the Mount Davies Road, in order to shorten travelling time from the east. They started just south of the

Mann Ranges The Mann Ranges are a mountain range in central Australia. It is located in the far northwest of South Australia, with a small section running over the border into the Northern Territory. It is part of the geological region known as the Musgrave ...

on 10 May 1961. They proceeded in a southerly direction and intercepted the Mount Davies Road about 50 kilometres south of Mount Lindsay on 6 June, a distance of 153 km. It was named Kintore Avenue after Mount Kintore,Governor of South Australia 1889-1895
/ref> a feature visible on the eastern side of the new road.

Present conditions

The entire length of the Mount Davies Road lies within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara lands. A note on the reference map states "All roads and tracks in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Land area are not accessible by the general public."

References

External links