Story 1: The National Highway.

Highway North.

Those who remember the joke that was the National Highway that lead from Pt Augusta in South Australia to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory in the 70s will have memories of a track, that certainly didn't deserve the title of road, let alone Highway or as it was labeled on the official maps at the time, "The Stuart National Highway".

Leaving Pt Augusta and heading north, the bitumen of the The National Highway quickly ended a few kilometers north of town to become an unpaved rough track, in summer the highway produced a fine choking white powder dust that easily hung in the air, further along the track turned into a fine red dust. No matter what the color it was so fine it easily found its way inside every vehicle using this road. Not only was the dust a problem it exposed huge sharp rocks that formed the base of the joke of a National Highway.

Australia's elected leaders even to this day are mostly focused on developing the country to the east of the well named The Great Australian Dividing Range, a line of hills and ranges run north and south along the eastern side of the continent of Australia, the same range is also responsible for jamming most of the Australian population into a narrow strip of land along the east coast, the Great  Dividing Ranges also blocks great quantities of rain drifting in from the Pacific from penetrating further into Australia's parched interior,
East coast Australians know or care bugger all about the true Australia west of the Great Dividing Range.

I began using the lower part of the Stuart Highway in the mid 1970's after obtaining a short term temporary job 150km north of Port Augusta at a Copper Mine called Mt Gunston, so named because of its proximity to the near by prominence left behind after the prehistoric seas retreated from central Australia, Mt Gunson soared to a height of around 200feet above the local countryside.

Traveling north in the mid 70's the road quickly became a challenge, as drivers were forced to use both sides of the road in their quest to avoid the largest or sharpest of the protruding rocks all the while keeping an eye out for rocks flung up by the sparse traffic going in the opposite direction or the occasional wandering Kangaroo, Emu's, sheep or tourists who having been blinded by the chocking raised dust of the passing traffic often simply stopped in the middle of the road while they waited for the dust to clear and surprising any following vehicle .
Speeds on this National Highway were usually somewhere around 80 km/hr although there were some sections where the road went through red clay which allowed much higher speeds, this clay became another special problem in the wet.

A journey of 150km would usually take an hour and a half in good conditions, some employees of the mine would boast of their ability to comple the journey in just one hour, it was certainly possible if you were prepared to put up with the violent shake rattle and roll, their vehicles, suspension and tires seldom lasted long.

After a good rain, the road having been graded, often with very little additional maintenance was in many places a good half to one and a half meters below the level of the surrounding countryside, these sections became completely submersed in rain and formed rivers as the deep muddy water sought lower areas to run off while hiding the waiting sharp rocks and deep pot holes.
Speeds during the wet were often reduced to around 20km/hr while vehicles were forced to use very low gears as they pushed red mud bow waves along while trying to avoid the red mud splattering and completely covering their windscreens while being forced into using up the precious limited clean windscreen washing water. My slowest trip along the National Highway was four and a half hours performed mostly in 2nd gear.

It wasn't unusual to come across tourist buses parked in the middle of the road unable to move back or forward along the wet clay sections, the passengers usually standing or seated about on chairs or large rocks on one side of the road with a make shift BBQ going, while they waited for the road conditions to improve.
The first question usually asked when meeting a bogged bus on the road was, "Is the road open"? Provided they could make it past the 10 or 15km of the clay section, the rocky sections of the Stuart River could with care support slow moving traffic in most conditions.

In the early part of the 1980's just one hundred and seventy nine years after federation the Australian Government decide to complete the sealing of the road north to Darwin, and west to Perth in Western Australia, the journey from Pt Augusta to Mt Gunson Mine was eventually reduced to one hour.