The Gunbarrel Highway is an isolated desert track in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It consists of 1400km of washaways, heavy corrugations, stone, sand and flood plains, and runs from Wiluna in the south to Yulara (via Jackie Junction and Docker River) in the north. Some of the eastern section of the road is now named the Tjukaruru Road for the Aboriginal people that live in this area.
The Gunbarrel Highway was the first road built as part of Australia's role in the weapons research facility called Woomera; the atomic bomb testing site in this area later named Maralinga. The highway was surveyed and constructed under the direction of legendary bushman Len Beadell, who was responsible for numerous other roads in Australia that opened up some of the most remote desert areas of the continent in the late 1940s and 1950s.
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