ABC: Is the Tanami Road the worst highway in Australia?

[Paul Rands]

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/tanami-road/4718100

Is the Tanami Road the worst highway in Australia?

Tuesday 28 May 2013 6:49PM

Cathy Van Extel

IMAGE: A ROAD SIGN NEAR HALLS CREEK, WA, INDICATING THE CONDITION OF SECTIONS OF THE 1000KM UNSEALED TANAMI RD. (STEVE WATERS/ LONELY PLANET IMAGES)

Take the Tanami Road in remote northern Australia and you're likely either to get bogged, or end up driving in a ditch to avoid corrugations. But this muddy, deteriorating former stock route is also supposed to be the gateway to the booming Kimberley region, as Cathy Van Extel reports.

If you've driven the Tanami Road in remote northern Australia then you know first hand that it's one of the worst roads in the country.

It runs across the Tanami Desert between Alice Springs and Halls Creek in Western Australia.

It's always been tough to drive, but increased mining activity, especially along the Northern Territory section, is taking a big toll.

Some regular users believes the Tanami Road is in its worst condition for nearly a decade, just at a time when the Kimberley is beginning to boom and vitally needs a transport link to the east.

Lara Wilde is the spokeswoman for the Tanami Action Group—formed late last year by the Central Kimberley Chamber of Commerce to lobby for a major upgrade of the desert road. She says the road suffers from the combination of fine red desert sand, and a drenching wet season.

‘In the wet season it’s covered in water,’ she says. ‘You can’t stop. If you want to stop and help somebody else who’s bogged you’ll get bogged in the process.’

If it was bitumened, you know, the community then could afford…instead of a 4WD they could afford a normal, standard 2WD motorcar. The car then would last a lot longer because they’re not bashing it up and down the corrugated roads. It would open up the community to their basic needs.

STUART CHETTLE

The 1077 kilometre road follows a cattle droving route NW from the MacDonnell Ranges above Alice Springs, leading across the desert to Halls Creek in the Kimberley. Most of it is dirt and gravel—about 20 per cent is bitumen. Around 700 kilometres is in the Northern Territory, and that’s where Ms Wilde says the road is worst.

‘Trucks are doing 35 kilometres an hour as a top speed,' she says. 'It is quite corrugated, and I’ve got pictures of whole chunks of road that have just disappeared.’

‘A lot of people say that they prefer to drive in the table drain [the trench next to the road] than actually on the road because it’s smoother.’

Ms Wilde says the stretch of Tanami through the Northern Territory is being destroyed by heavy use from mining and cattle trucks, and desperately needs to be re-built.

An Alice Springs based livestock transport company which operates triple road-trains has told ABC Rural the Tanami Road in the NT is in the worst condition it's been for nearly a decade. Mark Castagna, operations manager for Tanami Transport, describes the road as ‘rough as guts’.

View Larger Map

‘It knocks hell out of all our gear here and we’ve got to put our rate up to compensate for that,’ he says. ‘And then the poor old station owner he gets hit and, yeah, everyone hurts. You do a trip and then you’ve got to spend a day or day and a half in the shed just trying to get it back so you can go again.’

Maintenance of the road is a local government responsibility. The Halls Creek and Central Desert Shire councils each spend two million dollars a year on the road. But a major upgrade will likely depend on federal government support. Ms Wilde says the NT government is being more proactive than the WA government.

‘Unlike the WA state government, the NT government has actually applied for a lot of federal funding through Infrastructure Australia and different funding programs like that to get this work underway,’ she says. ‘And that’s probably why today they’ve got a lot more of the road paved than we have. Also theirs is territory-run, like the Territory there is very, very much behind it, whereas here it’s up to the shire of Halls Creek, and it’s a big shire with a lot of roads, and they’re really struggling to maintain their end.’

The Tanami Action Group is about to host a media trip along the length of the road to highlight the need for an upgrade. Ms Wilde says the Kimberley is booming and needs more direct road access. The Tanami currently connects Highway 87—the gateway to freight from Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney—to places like Halls Creek and Derby, as well as the greater Kimberley through Highway 1.

‘We’ve got nickel, iron ore, oil and gas, we’re the biggest diamond producer in Australia, and we’ve got huge farming developments going ahead at not only the Ord but you’ve also got Fitzroy Valley and La Grange,’ she says. ‘We’ve got 600,000 head of cattle in the Kimberley and about 160,000 head of that goes to market each year.’

The construction of new housing and shopping facilities in the Kimberley also relies on the Tanami, Ms Wilde says, as the road is the most direct road freight route for timber, machinery and parts from the southern and eastern states of Australia.

‘[T]he Tanami just makes sense to connect that south-eastern corner with the Kimberley in the shortest way possible,’ she says.

In a statement to RN Breakfast, the Territory Government said the Tanami services the mining, pastoral and tourist industries as well as remote communities. And an upgrade would result in economic and social benefits on both sides of the border. It says an upgraded road would open up the Territory for further mining related business opportunities, provide an improved supply route from the eastern seaboard to the Kimberley and add alternative Defence transportation options.

And for some remote Indigenous communities it may also be the key to breaking the cycle of welfare dependency.

The Tanami is used by about 3,500 people living in remote NT communities—and a further 1000 people in WA, including Mulan—population 160. Stuart Chettle, chief executive officer of Mulan Aboriginal Corporation says it's a gruelling 320 kilometre trip to Halls Creek to access essential services.

‘You need 4WD because of the red soil,’ Mr Chettle says. ‘The cars really get knocked around. We’ve got cars that are 12 months old through the Corporation that are just destroyed.’

He says many in his community are struggling to travel the road in their 20 and 30-year-old 4WDs.

‘Cars are falling apart, panels are falling off them—because of the corrugation, the vibration,’ he says. ‘You know, steering arms, suspension components are just shot. So the poor old community, they struggle to get to Halls Creek.’

Mr Chettle says a paved road would have social and economic benefits.

'Mulan, Balgo and Billiluna communities, they have some big art centres and we rely wholly and solely on our tourism,' he says. 'By bituminising the road we’d just have access to more of that, which in turn brings more money into the community, which in turn makes the communities a much more viable thing to be at.’

As for adventurers keen to keep the Tanami Track a challenge—the Tanami Action Group says there are plenty of other roads to try your hand at.

‘We’ve got the Canning Stock Route, we’ve got the Duncan Highway,’ she says. ‘We’ve also got the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley. If you want to get the vibe we can give you other roads to do it on, but the Tanami can actually serve as a freight corridor for us to connect us to the rest of Australia.’

Find out more at RN Breakfast.

--
Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com

[Sam Laybutt]

Interesting read - thanks Paul.

Hopefully I'll get to do a run down the Tanami before too much more is sealed.

---

From: paul...@gmail.com
Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 13:17:06 +1000
Subject: [Aussie Highways] ABC: Is the Tanami Road the worst highway in Australia?
To: aussie-...@googlegroups.com

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/tanami-road/4718100

[Paul Rands]

It'd be an interesting drive, unsealed or sealed. Some hire companies forbid their vehicles along it.

--
Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Aussie Highways" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to aussie-highwa...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to aussie-...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/aussie-highways?hl=en-US.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[humehwy31]

I did the entire length of the Tanami Road in 1992 on a coach tour. It was nowhere near as bad as this article describes.

There certainly wasn't 20% sealed back then. Only the first 30km or so from the Stuart Hwy towards Yuendumu.

The road was corrugated but well maintained. Lots of corrugations, but the corrugations were regular and evenly spaced (like a tin roof), with very few potholes or washouts. The coach vibrated like all hell up to about 40km/h or so, then it became smooth as the momentum carried the coach over the corrugation.

Some of my memories of the Tanami Road ...

Between Alice Springs and Yuendumu, a very severe fence which ran along the side of the road for many kilometres, it felt like it wouldn't end. At regular intervals, signs that said something like "Commonwealth Property - No Trespassing". I couldn't see anything behind the fences. I'm guessing that's Australia's very own Area 51.

A mountain range on the other side of the road, the coach captain said it was the Chewing Ranges. A carpet of wildflowers (including the Sturt's desert rose) between the road and the ranges. Beautiful.

There were rain clouds on the horizon. Telecom MobileNet didn't have good coverage outside major towns back then, so the driver did a U turn, drove almost all the way back to the Stuart Hwy, to call ahead to the Yuendumu police station to enquire about road and weather conditions. We were given the all clear, then we turned back and headed northwest again.

Yuendumu ... I remember, even though I was in my early teens, being appalled at the disgraceful conditions the residents were forced to endure. I saw an entire extended family living under a corrugated iron sheet weighed down by bricks on top of blocks, with perhaps three feet of space between the iron and the ground. A 1.25 litre bottle of soft drink at the community supermarket cost $3. Supermarkets in the big towns on the same trip would charge about $1.20 or so.

Traffic sometimes passed other traffic on the right. Drivers (including our coach) preferred to stay slightly to the right because of the heat shimmer, it made oncoming traffic easier to see if the vehicle was in the middle. It was easier just to stay on the right.

A massive mine out in the middle of nowhere with a very large airstrip. We were told it was long enough for 747s to land.

Rabbit Flat roadhouse ... petrol was about $1.10 a litre. It was 80-something cents in Alice Springs, and probably 60-something in Sydney.

We camped overnight at the NT/WA border. There was a sign pointing to the left for the "McGuire Track" with a tyre hanging off it next to the WA border sign, I have no idea where that goes.

Between the border and Halls Creek, uneventful. We went to the Wolf Creek meteorite crater. Crossed a few dry river beds.

--Brad

[Sam Laybutt]

Thanks Brad, I enjoyed those recollections :)

[Musa Hodzic]

Enjoyed it too. I love your road trip stories :).

On 29 May 2013 23:31, Sam Laybutt <crazykn...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Brad, I enjoyed those recollections :)

--