Qualla: Anne Beadell Highway

Anne Beadell Highway: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marian Deschain, CC BY-SA 3.0. Len Beadell named the road after his wife, which might be the most romantic gesture in the history of civil engineering -- or the cruelest, depending on how you feel about 1,350 kilometers of corrugated dirt, soft sand, and absolute emptiness. The Anne Beadell Highway is not a highway in any conventional sense. It is a track, scraped through the Great Victoria Desert in the 1950s and 1960s by Beadell and his Gunbarrel Construction Party, connecting the underground opal town of Coober Pedy in South Australia to Laverton in Western Australia. There are no towns between them. There is one roadhouse. The recommended travel season is April to October, because in summer the temperatures will kill you, and in winter the nights drop below freezing.

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Image: Marian Deschain | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anne Beadell Highway: A Road Born from the Bomb

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marian Deschain, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Anne Beadell Highway belongs to a family of tracks known as the Bomb Roads. In the 1950s, Len Beadell -- surveyor, bushman, and self-described 'last explorer' of inland Australia -- was tasked with opening routes through the western deserts to support British nuclear weapons ...

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Image: Marian Deschain | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anne Beadell Highway: Into the Emptiness

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marian Deschain, CC BY-SA 3.0. Leaving Coober Pedy, the track passes through the scree hills of abandoned opal diggings before flattening into a vast, sparsely vegetated plain. The first stretch to Mabel Creek Station follows a well-graded gravel road -- the last easy driving you will do for days. Beyond the d...

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Image: Marian Deschain | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anne Beadell Highway: The Single Lifeline

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gazjo at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Roughly halfway along the route sits the Ilkurlka Roadhouse, the only settlement between Coober Pedy and Laverton. It operates a service station and offers basic supplies, but travelers cannot rely on it for anything more than small purchases. The highway demands that you carry e...

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Image: Gazjo at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Anne Beadell Highway: Companions on the Track

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marian Deschain, CC BY-SA 3.0. Even in peak season, the Anne Beadell Highway sees perhaps eight vehicles a day. The wildlife, by contrast, is constant. Kangaroos and emus pace alongside vehicles before swerving suicidally across the track. Camels -- descendants of animals imported for 19th-century exploration ...

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Image: Marian Deschain | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anne Beadell Highway: The Desert's Quiet Reward

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marian Deschain, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nobody drives the Anne Beadell Highway for convenience. The route exists in a category of travel where difficulty is the point, where the emptiness of the Great Victoria Desert becomes a kind of presence rather than an absence. At night, with no light pollution for hundreds of ki...

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Image: Marian Deschain | CC BY-SA 3.0