14 Jul 10 – Gunbarrel Highway (Wiluna-Warburton)

By Craig: The Gunbarrel, one of Australia’s historic tracks, what can one say, well simply Magic! Just to be out on this track was a pleasure, the knowledge that we were travelling on one of the Gunbarrel Construction Party's historic roads, brilliant. Highway, well a picture paints a thousand words and although beautiful I fall short calling it a highway.







The Gunbarrel starts at Wiluna as a wide smooth dirt road however once you pass Carnegie Station ($2.50 p/l diesel the most expensive to date) it changes and there are many washouts, ruts, bumps and narrow two wheel tracks to negotiate.













In places the track is difficult to follow and as you track along, mountains appear to rise out of vast plains as the road passes through rocky outcrops, then down through mud holes and back into open plains.























However the joy of 4wding this road is only surpassed by star gazing in the night sky while boiling a billy around the camp fire.

Peaceful nights all bar the occasional howl of a dingo prelude sunrise and the next day's adventure commencing with an early rise.

We passed many of Len Beadell’s markers, saw camel and dingo tracks making us very aware of their presence but there was a resounding feeling of solitude.











Two significant stops were at Len's Tree, a place where Len had scarped out a section of tree bark to place bearings in latitude and longitude and Len’s Camp which was an old road crew camp site.
















The highlight for me was a visit to Mt Beadell.
Mounted on top of the hill as a memorial to Len is his theodolite. Standing there looking out over country which bears many of Len’s survey marks is an inspirational event which I am proud to have experienced.








Other stops along the way were for both sight seeing and of a more personal nature.


A picture tells a thousand words so no more explanation is required for the personal stops however we did visit several significant rock holes and dare I forget to mention we visited Mt Samuel.





















By Lou: Our 4 day/3 night stay on the Gunbarrel was excellent. The countryside is just beautiful, and again in the car I read aloud from Len Beadell’s “Too Long in the Bush” which relates to the construction of part of this road. For 2 of the nights we just pulled off the side of the road once we could spot a spinifex-free spot, and on one night we camped at a formal campground, Camp Beadell, 6km from Mt Beadell. Each night we would hear dingoes howling in the distance but at Camp Beadell,
a pack circled the site and drew as close as 30m away howling their heads off. We assume this was because our fellow campers had a little dog with them, and we've been told the dingoes will call to all dogs in the area.
The setting up each night was simple and stress free.


Setting up a campfire for cooking is quicker than setting up the gas cooker, and given we wore the same clothes 4 days in a row, there were no clothes bags needed to unpack!

Other images of our Gunbarrel experience:



























Oh! and we thought we had some trouble with our trailer, at least our's is still with us.