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AUSTRALIA'S "GREAT NORTH ROAD":
New Highway Has Romance and Strategic
Importance
By JEROME CLIFFORD
R0ADWORKERS LIKE THESE MEN were the heroes of the Great North Road. More than 2f000 of them completed the 450 miles of the Tennant Creek — Birdum section in the phenomenal time of 90 days! Help
R0ADWORKERS LIKE THESE MEN were the heroes of the
Great North Road. More than 2f000 of them completed
the 450 miles of the Tennant Creek — Birdum section
in the phenomenal time of 90 days!
BIRDUM, THE SOUTHERN TERMINUS OF RAILWAY LINE FROM DARWIN. Help
BIRDUM, THE SOUTHERN
TERMINUS OF RAILWAY
LINE FROM DARWIN.
ALICE SPRINQS, "capital of the Centre," is a square of civilisation amid the plains and stunted hills of the inland. Terminal point of Hie railroad from Adelaide, Alice Springs is the beginning of Hie Great North Road that leads across the continent to Darwin. Help
ALICE SPRINQS, "capital of the Centre," is a square of
civilisation amid the plains and stunted hills of the inland.
Terminal point of Hie railroad from Adelaide, Alice Springs
is the beginning of Hie Great North Road that leads across
the continent to Darwin.
DARWIN, capital of the far north, and strategic defence base of Australia's northern coast line, is the terminus of the new all-weather highway that links the north of a continent with the south. Help
DARWIN, capital of the far north, and strategic
defence base of Australia's northern coast
line, is the terminus of the new all-weather
highway that links the north of a continent
with the south.
THE LITTLE TOWN OF TENNANT CREEK depends almost entirely on the output of gold in the district. Gold, not scenery, is the attraction for residents! Help
THE LITTLE TOWN OF TENNANT CREEK
depends almost entirely on the output of gold
in the district. Gold, not scenery, is the
attraction for residents!
THE "BULLDOZER" SHIFTS MOUNTAINS OF EARTH AND SIMPLIFIES ROAOWORK. Help
THE "BULLDOZER" SHIFTS MOUNTAINS OF
EARTH AND SIMPLIFIES ROAOWORK.
TTISTORY has shown clearly how civilisation has
followed the road; the builders of high
ways in all centuries have been the advance guard
of civilisations, of races, of dynasties; Roads have
created the vivid pictures of history — the Roman
legions tramping the Appian Way; the riches of
Cathay laden on caravans winding through the
Gobi Desert down th4 Great Silk Road; the Eng
lish archers marching down the Great North
Road. ...
More recently we have seen modern history being
written round the Burma Road; the engineering
triumphs of the Pan-American Highway linking
the two Americas; the soaring, swooping ribbon
of the Trans-Andean Highway connecting Buenos
Aires and Valparaiso. ...
Now Australia has a mighty road that spans
a continent — the all-weather highway that links
strategic Darwin with the productive south — the
unbroken link of stone and stamped earth that is
Australia's Great North Road. . . .
The importance of the road from a military
point of view Is a reflection of the growing sig
nificance of Darwin in the general picture of Aus
tralian defence.
Darwin is no longer the Cinderella city of Aus
tralia. It is our front gateway; an Immense factor
in our national importance. Nothing lies south of
Australia but cold, grey seas and the desolate
wastes of Antarctica. Northward lie the teeming
lands of Asia and a war-torn world. If aggression
comes to Australia it will come from the north,
and Darwin is the strategic centre of our first
bastion of national defence. l£~Js already a for
midable garrison. It majr^yet become a grtat
northern naval base rivalling Singapore, and form
ing a triangle of defence with Britain's Malayan
fortress mid America's great Pacific base at Pearl
Harbour.
Darwin's Many Advantages
Darwin's advantages as a strategic northern base
were many. It also ha& disadvantages — the main
one being its isolation from the general scheme of
Australian development, its complete dissociation
from essential wartime industries.
The completion of~ the Great North Road has
wiped away most of these disadvantages.
Darwin is now connected by splendid road and
rail services with all the essential industries of
the south and east. Along the great ribbon of road
way that winds through the "dead heart" of the
continent, troops and equipment can be moved
speedily and safely. Recently, considerable detach
ments of the A.IP. from Victoria and New South
Wales reached Darwin after a 3,000-mile trek by
road and rail, the greater part of the journey being
made over the new road to Birdum, where the
railway line to Darwin begins. It was the greatest
movement of troops ever made within Australia.
It was accomplished speedily and without one
mishap or a moment's delay. It was proof posi
tive of the Immense value , to Australian defence
of the new highway. ...
There have been tracks and roads of a sort
from north to south of the continent in the past.
But Australia's "Centre" is no answer to a road
builder's prayer. There are problems of erosion/
vicious sandstorms, immense floods that carve roads
and tracks to pieces.
The real value of the new highway is that it
is an "all-weather" road; its main purpose to keep
a route open during the worst of the wet season,
when normally almost all traffic in the Centre is
brought to a standstill by quagmires and wash
aways and turbulent torrents. Early in March
the new road was tested by a fierce downpour near
Tennant Creek. It remained open for traffic the
whole time.
Where the Rood Begins
About 900 miles north of Adelaide, Where the
main railway line ends at Alice Springs, "capital
of the Centre," the great road begins. It continues
for a thousand miles northward, through some of
the most interesting and some of the most deso
late country in all Australia. Generally its route
lies close alongside the Overland Telegraph, which
in turn almost follows the trail biased 80 years
ago by the intrepid John McDouall Stuart.
After leaving "The Alice" the road runs through
stretching plains, where the mulga and myall and
ghost gums are scattered sparsely. It passes along
side a signpost, marking the exact geographic centre
of the continent, to the squat outcrop of Central
Mount Stuart, which is~ an everlasting memorial.
to the man who courageously smashed the first
trail through that inhospitable land. Northward
runs the road, over the Forster Range to Barrow's
Creek, through a strange, silent land of bald hills
and crystal-clear light, skirting the fantastic
granite formations of the Devil's Marbles, curv
ing past weird limestone deposits that look like
ruined temples, through gorges and ravines, and
past the low hills" of the MUrchlson, Jervols,
McDouall, and Davenport Ranges. Occasionally it
runs through small townships — Tennant Creek,
with a population that fluctuates with every
"strike" of gold, Powell's Creek, Newcastle Waters,
Daly Waters, and Birdum. From that point to
NEARING DARWIN, the rood runs through ' luxurious tropica! forests, skirts rivers infested with crocodiles. This is typical country. Help

NEARING DARWIN, the rood runs through
' luxurious tropica! forests, skirts rivers infested

with crocodiles. This is typical country.

Darwin it seems that the road has entered a new
land, where roaring torrents come down with the
"wet" to carve the sand away from the banks of
the great rivers, the Katharine. King. Edith, and
Ferguson,

It is a road with that "continuity and change"
that Stevenson suggested every great road should
possess. There are the huge 15-foot anthills that
stud almost every mile of the 1.000-mile route,
the wandering aborigines, the vast mobs of horses
and cattle winding dustily along the stock routes
marked every 20 miles or so by the Government
wells, the herds of goats with their aborigine goat
herds, camel trains moving out Into the desert,
prodigious motor-trucks carting supplies to the
outlying settlers, an occasional tourist car, waving
patches of kangaroo grass 10ft. high, the thick
jungle belt that surrounds Darwin, the lands of
the buffalo and the rivers of the crocodile. . . .

Near the ribbon of the road are the great cattle
holdings — the "small" stations, only 2,000 square
miles in area, the mighty Victoria Downs with its
territory of 10,500 square miles! And the old
Elsey homestead, made famous by Mrs. Aeneas
Gunn in "We of the Never Never." The Great
North Road, as all such mighty roads should be,
is a road of history and romance.

Permanent Memorial

Apart from its immense strategic value, it is a
permanent memory of a great man — John
McDcuall Stuart — who pushed on through the
land of spinifex and hostile blacks in the days
when the Centre was unexplored territory; who
tried again and again until that triumphant day
of July 17, 1862, when he at last burst through
the mud and mangroves to the coast just north of
where Darwin now stands — the first man to
traverse the continent through the. centre from
south to north. He travelled south again, his horses
dead, his camps attacked by treacherous blacks,
himself partly paralysed and temporarily blind.
But he reached Adelaide again. The triumph of
homecoming was denied to Burke and Wills, who
also tried to wrest the secrets from the Centre.

The road is also a memorial to the South Aus
tralian Postmaster-General, Charles Todd, and to
the gallant band who struggled against sand and
heat and flood and swamps for 23 months to lay
the Overland Telegraph- Une, completed in 1872
at a cost of over £300,000 and infinite labour.
It is a memorial, too, to the pioneer settlers who
drove their stock into the unknown to look for gold
or to establish the nucleus of the great cattle runs
of to-day. Along the road that these men and
women so slowly travelled can now move swiftly
the mechanised units of modern armies, the great
diesel trucks of commerce, the sleek, streamlined
cars of tourists.

The most recent workers on the Great North
Road deserve their tribute, too. Whether the per
manent all-weather road so important to the
inland and to Australia would have been com
pleted by now if war had not come is a matter
for conjecture. Increasing strategic importance of
Darwin made haste imperative, and the men who
did the job worked magnificently.

?*Rusb job!" said Senator Foil, then Minister
for the Interior. And it was. . . . Carried out

MODERN MEANS OF COMMUNICATION ore scarce in the vpst north of Australia. Although there has been a rood across the desert to Darwin for many years, it was by no means an "all-weather" road. The strategic importance from a military point of view of the new highway can be seen in a " glance at this map, which shows all existing means of communication in this area. Help

MODERN MEANS OF COMMUNICATION ore scarce in the vpst north of Australia. Although there

has been a rood across the desert to Darwin for many years, it was by no means an "all-weather"
road. The strategic importance from a military point of view of the new highway can be seen in a
" glance at this map, which shows all existing means of communication in this area.

with the co-operation of the Army Department,
Immense "bulldozers," modern mechanised trac
tors, and roadmaking machines, and 2,100 men in
three gangs of 700 each, got to work. States con
cerned each undertook certain sections of the route.
It was essential that the Job be dime before the
"wet" season, because it would have to be in use
when the rains came. As an example of the splen
did response of the workers, the 450 miles of the
Tennaht Creek-Birdum section was completed in
90 days! One stretch of 11 miles of complete con
struction in a day set an all-time world road
making record. Throughout, the average was five
miles a day for three months!

Now that the rainy season has ended, work has
begun on a job almost as important — the con
struction of a new all-weather road that will link
western Queensland with the Great North Road.
Much of the equipment and many of the men used
tq make the Alice Springs-Darwin road are being
employed on the new highway, which will run
from Mount Isa, south of the Barkly Tableland,
and skirting the black soil plains, to Tennant

Creek.

These new highways mean much to Australia.
They are given colour by their associations with a
romantic history; they are given significance by
their integral place in the general scheme of Aus
tralian preparedness. . .

*

PRAISE FOR DR. GOEBBELS

Doctor Goebbels is a blackguard who tells

Lies of astounding dimensions,

Bui the vicious, impious, corrupt Ananias

Concocting his dirty intentions

To kick up a fuss between Britain and us,

Is not only being ridiculous,

But the treacherous son of a Teutonic gun

Is as despicable as he's pediculous. -

—TOM <y BEDLAM.

FAILURE:

In Lowell, Massachussetts, a young man claimed
draft deferment on the grounds that he was sup
porting "my two landladies."

. . "Time," New York.
BLINDING:

The reason for the Coloured birth decline, he
added, appears to be a high proportion of child
lessness among coloured women.

,.. "Indianapolis News," U.SA.

MEN OF THE DARWIN GARRISON train con stantly, for the defence of the nothern shores is essential to the defence of Australia. Help

MEN OF THE DARWIN GARRISON train con

stantly, for the defence of the nothern shores

is essential to the defence of Australia.

AT TENNANT CREEK one Of the huge "inland road freighters" ' takes aboard cargo on the * Great North Road. Help

AT TENNANT CREEK one Of the huge "inland

road freighters" ' takes aboard cargo on the *

Great North Road.

A LINK WITH THE FAST: Not for from Alice Springs, a camel train Is moved off the rood into the shelter of on old gum, where camp Is pitched for the night. Help

A LINK WITH THE FAST: Not for from Alice

Springs, a camel train Is moved off the rood
into the shelter of on old gum, where camp

Is pitched for the night.

$