With a couple of trips along the Anne Beadell Highway in the last 18 months, Ron and Viv Moon take you on one of Australia’s longest desert forays through the Great Victoria Desert.

The well hides amongst a bramble of scrub, and for a few moments I wondered if I was even in the right place. Then my mate Owen gave a call from a few metres away, and while he was close, I couldn’t see him, such was the thickness and verdancy of the trees and bushes hiding him … and the well.

Tallaringa Well was first discovered by Europeans by the little-known SA explorer, Richard Maurice, and he then used it as a watering point on his expeditions through the area between 1897 and 1902. The well was rediscovered by Len Beadell during his grading of the Anne Beadell Highway in 1953, and now nearly every Anne Beadell Highway (ABH) traveller stops there to check it out. Most walk away disappointed, as today it is nothing more than a dry, small, shovel-sized hole in the centre of a low depression, more often than not covered with the remains of some long-ago roof rack, abandoned by some luckless traveller. Even when Len discovered it, the well was not much bigger or any more impressive than it is now; however, having visited a number of such wells in desert country in the past, they were once dug down to some considerable depth to obtain the life-giving fluid, and Maurice records that it flowed water at a seemingly now improbable 1000 gallons (4,500 litres) an hour.

We set up camp close by, our party revelling in the isolation of the desert and the myriad of stars that appeared as darkness swept over us. We were on the Anne Beadell Highway, about 130 km west of Coober Pedy, where we had left the blacktop of the Stuart Highway and headed first out through a pot-marked landscape, where white mullock heaps crowded around each and every one of the opal mine workings, the colourful opal having made the town world-famous.

Near Mabel Downs homestead we rattled onto the ABH proper, the road changing suddenly, and not for the better, as the nearby sign told us that it was 1300 km to Laverton, the next town at the far end of the fabled ‘highway.’

The Anne Beadell Highway is one of the many famous routes across the deserts put in by Len Beadell and his legendary Gunbarrel Road Construction Party and was named after his wife, Anne. In 1947 Len had been tasked with finding and establishing a site for a rocket range, the town becoming Woomera and the rocket range extending across the country to the Indian Ocean. Today, while smaller in size than back when it was first established, it remains the largest land-based rocket range in the world.

In 1952, Len was then asked to find a site for a series of British A-bomb tests, and after exploring westward into extremely remote and trackless country, unseen by Europeans since Giles had been through the region in the 1870s and Maurice at the turn of the 20th century, he chose a spot he called Emu. In 1953 his crew built the road from Mable Creek, then on the Stuart Highway, to the test site. In 1962, after building his famous Gunbarrel Highway and other desert roads, they returned to push the Anne Beadell westward to Yamarna Station and the WA road network.

Leaving the pastoral country behind, we crossed the eastern boundary into the Tallaringa Conservation Park, the track being surprisingly good, but I guess that’s a matter of opinion and how much you’ve been exposed to rough tracks and corrugated roads. To get through the Dog Fence, which forms the park boundary here, you need to detour a few kilometres south to a gate through ‘the netting,’ as it’s called by those who maintain it. Our camp, close to the well itself, was just 14 km further on.

The next morning, pushing through a band of thick scrub, the track hemmed in by dense bush and overhung by numerous branches, the country suddenly changed to more open saltbush country, heralding the approach of the A-bomb test sites.

Back in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, Britain wanted to test its recently developed atomic bombs and conned the Australian government into allowing it to test them in remote areas of Australia. The first explosion was out on the Monte Bello Islands off Exmouth, soon followed in October 1953 by Totem 1, the first A-bomb to be detonated on the Australian mainland. This was a 10Kt device (a Kt is the equivalent of 1,000 tonnes of TNT) and was exploded on top of a 31-metre tower. Just 12 days later, Totem 2, a mere 8 kt bomb, was again detonated on top of a steel tower. While there is little to see at either site, there are concrete monuments at ‘Ground Zero’ to both explosions, while a few fragments of twisted metal — the remains of the towers, which were basically vaporised by the blasts — can be discerned poking out from the sands.

After wandering and wondering around both bomb sites, we headed just south of the ABH, and basically opposite the bomb sites, to Observation Hill, where all the dignitaries stood to watch the bomb blasts — standing there, I can’t help but think it would be a bit too close for my liking!

Pushing on, we soon came to a track junction close to the site of the once vibrant Emu village and the airstrip on the claypan, just a short distance to the north. The Anne Beadell does a bit of a dogleg through here, passing an old bore that once supplied water to the town (it no longer works), a little-used camping area, and a more recent, fully automatic weather station. A track heads south from here too, to Maralinga and the more extensive A-bomb sites there, but this route is closed to the general public.

The track west, less used now, continued much as before, and we cruised along easily, the suspension and lower tyre pressures soaking up most of the bumps and corrugations. Still, we had come across the first of the camper trailers abandoned along the track before we got to the bomb sites, and on an earlier trip a couple of years previously we had broken a shock absorber bracket along this section of the Anne Beadell.

We had removed the shock and the bracket and pushed on — a little slower than previously — with the knowledge that such downfalls are all part of the adventure and you need to be able to handle such breakdowns; leaving a trailer though, stripped and abandoned in the scrub, is abhorrent to me! One thing I have learnt, though, after numerous trips across the ABH and other remote outback routes, is that Aussie-designed and -built camper trailers fail a lot less than the cheaper Chinese ones (with stirring Aussie names and themes; their only real Aussie content) that now seemingly dominate the market — in quantity but not quality. Travellers wanting to tackle our tougher, more remote tracks, please take note!

Passing Annes Corner and the Mount Davies Road (another of Len’s roads but now out of bounds), we entered the Maralinga-Tjarutja Lands, where signs indicated our fate if we didn’t have the correct permits. Rangers from Oak Valley (the main community in the Lands) often patrol the ABH these days; remote cameras have been installed, while much environmental work is being done, including trying to control buffel grass and exterminating feral cats. Their work needs to be applauded, and we need to do the right thing, obeying any request, staying on track, and being very careful with campfires.

We crossed into the 21,300 ha Mamungari Conservation Park, which straddles the ABH from about 75 km west of Annes Corner all the way to the SA-WA border and is classified as a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. While some maps show a ‘No Camping Zone’ for about half the distance along the ABH, there is no mention of the zone or any camping restrictions when you get a permit from the Aboriginal Traditional Owners; not sure what is going on there.

Just a short distance further on, we were at Voakes Hill Corner. At the corner, an original post and plaque, erected by Len, still stand, indicating its position and distances to Mabel Creek and Laverton, amongst others. Len’s plaques are a feature of most of his tracks, but sadly most of the originals have been flogged, so Connie, Len’s daughter, has made it a pilgrimage to replace them with identical ones, apart from a small brand in the bottom right indicating it is a faithful copy. Also here, another of Len’s roads heads south to the Trans Australian Railway Line, meeting it at the small railway town of Cook.

A track to Voakes Hill leaves the ABH a little further west, its somewhat random wanderings northwards taking a good hour each way before a short walk through the mallee scrub to the crest is rewarded with expansive views of this remote wilderness area. The hill was named by Maurice during his 1901 expedition from Ooldea to the Rawlinson Ranges after a member of the party, Bill Voakes.

For travellers along the ABH, the Friends of the Great Victoria Desert Parks have developed an interpretative self-drive trail west of Voakes Hill Corner. Take the time to stop at each of the seven numbered posts and learn a little about the surrounding plants, as the Great Victoria Desert is an area of great biodiversity and is in almost pristine condition. One of its most spectacular features is the woodlands dominated by taller, more regal black oak trees that often grow to 20 metres or more.

The next morning, and almost imperceptibly, the ABH deteriorated again west of the corner and continued like that, pushing through the occasional band of thick vegetation before breaking out again into sandy plains dominated by spinifex, mallee, low scrubs, and occasional stands of the aforementioned black oak, or cypress pine.

The first indication that you are closing in on the WA-SA border, some 170 km west of Voakes Hill Corner, is the somewhat sudden appearance of the ephemeral Serpentine Lakes, named by that great WA explorer and name giver, Frank Hann, in 1908 after one of his travelling companions. The lakes stretch north-south, close to the border, for over 100 km and are considered an important wetland — on the occasions they have water in them!

Almost immediately as you leave the lake bed, you cross into WA, and within 100 metres, the track, or road now, improves out of sight. Wider and straighter, the Laverton Shire, which looks after a vast area of WA, sends out a grader every couple of years to ‘touch up’ the track. Of course, such improvements mean you can travel faster, and with the increase in speed come corrugations. We were pretty lucky, the road being only lightly corrugated for most of the way with the occasional wash-away from the recent rains to watch out for.

That night we camped at Tjutatja Tank, a pleasant camping area with a modicum of water, established and maintained by the local Aboriginal people. The surrounding land is ‘Spinifex Country’, managed and looked after by the Spinifex people, who allow access and camping along the ABH without the requirement of a permit; something that should and could be replicated elsewhere in Australia.

We stopped at the remote Ilkurlka Roadhouse, being made welcome by Phil Merry, the sole resident and manager, and while our vehicles drank heavily from the above-ground fuel tanks, the humans raided the store for essential supplies like ice cream. Nearby is another well-set-up campsite for travellers.

Once back on the road, we made good time, ignoring yet another set-up camping area and the turn-off to the aircraft wreck located 10 km north of the ABH. We crossed the Connie Sue Highway at Neale Junction, both names taken from the Beadell family songbook. Near the junction is a small camping area with a water tank, all dominated by one of the most spectacular trees to be found in the Great Victoria Desert, a marble gum. But this area had been ravaged by a bushfire within the last 12 months, so we pushed on, camping after having made over 260 km for the day, including a longish stop at the roadhouse.

The road continued pretty good the next day, and we stopped at the flat-topped peak of Bishop Riley’s Pulpit, another feature named by Frank Hann. Some of the more energetic of us climbed the peak while others just drank in the solitude and scenery while sipping on a brew.

The peak heralds the eastern boundary of the Yeo Lakes Nature Reserve, but the lake remains out of sight if you stick to the ABH. At the abandoned Yeo homestead, now a Parks WA-run camping site, you can wander through the one-room home and check out the often brackish water point complete with windlass and wonder what it took to live here and wrest a living from this harsh land. Near here a track does head north to take you closer to Yeo Lake itself.

At Point Sunday (a feature named by Hann in 1903), the ABH veers south-west towards Yamarna, another deserted homestead that lies in complete ruins, while gold and copper mining companies search and drill in the surrounding area; Laverton is less than 150 km away.

We struck north to the Great Central Road, our adventure pushing towards Tjukayirla Roadhouse and more of Len Beadell’s roads as we headed north through the Gibson, Great Sandy, and Little Sandy Deserts, but that’s a story for another time!

This adventure can be found in the 125th edition of Western 4W Driver at issuu.com