A plan to seal a rough and rugged 790-kilometre section of the Tanami Track and ‘open up the west’ has moved a significant step closer to becoming reality.
A joint government proposal to upgrade the road — a 1014km link between Northern Territory and Western Australia through the Tanami Desert — has been welcomed by tourism operators and cattle station owners.
Both the NT and WA governments have announced they are together vying for$680 million from the Federal Government to transform the 790km unsealed stretch into a fully sealed, two-lane highway.
The owner of the Napperby Station and Tilmouth Well Roadhouse, Janet Chisolm, told the ABC that grey nomads would be among the big beneficiaries.
“There’s a lot of people wanting to travel with caravans, but the Tanami is too rough,” she said. “There’s definitely been a drop in people travelling up and down the road in the last two years, but not on the Stuart Highway.”
She said the demand was potentially massive.
“The market is out there … you really need to open that access,” she said. “It’s a huge market, people will always want to travel to the Kimberley and Kununurra.”
If the funding application is successful, the construction of the project would be over a five to 10-year period.
As sorry as a lot of the true 4 wheel drivers campers are we would welcome it as love the outback and have driven on corrugated roads in our semi off-road van but don’t do it on any roads of great length.
Its true the world is getting a smaller place but like the sealed road across the nullabor the sealing of the tanami will pave the way (exscuse the pun) for a whole new adventure for many nomads, besides if you crave off road adventure parts of the pacific & bruce highways come close.