DARWIN=ADELAIDE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21280, 26 November 1940, Page 7

DARWIN=ADELAIDE

ALL-WEATHER ROAD CONSTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA WORK BEGUN IN 1927 Australia is rushing to completion a new transcontinental all-weather defence road, connecting the northern port of Darwin with the three states of South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland. The 600 miles between Alice Springs and Birdum remain to be completed, states the Christian Science Monitor. It is expected that the new highway, which connects the three state capitals of Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane with the northern port, will be completed by February. The project has been Undertaken by cooperation among the three states and Commonwealth defence authorities. Its main purpose is to give the naval and military garrisons at Darwin proper overland transport, instead of being dependent, as at present, upon connections by sea. Present defective communications make it possible for Darwin to be entirely cut off from the administrative centres of the states. Free From Air Attack Because of its great distance from the coast, this central Australian highway will not be open to successful air attack, even from aircraft carriers cruising off the coast. The plan to push a strategic highway through the centre of Australia was strongly advocated more than 10 years ago when the Stanley M. Bruce Government set itself to connect the 2100 miles between Adelaide and Darwin with a narrow-gauge transcontinental railway. Sir Douglas Mawson, Dr. Cecil Madigan, and other experts believed the great flat plain of central Australia could easily be crossed by an up-to-date motor road. The highway plan also would be less costly than the 1063-mile railway proposed from Oodnadatta, the most northerly railhead of the South Australian railway system through the Northern Territory to Darwin. Work Begun in 1927 Work on the first section of the new line, extending the railway from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs, 300 miles to the north, was begun in 1927 and completed in 1929, opening large tracts of pastoral territory round Alice Springs. Subsequently, a 300-mile stretch of railroad was built southward from Darwin. But the complete transcontinental route, which ha?\ been intended to match the east-west transcontinental route from Brisbane to Perth, and which had been urgently recommended by Lord Kitchener as a necessity for quick concentration of troops for defence purposes, has not been built. The new highway will bring the most northerly and southerly Australian bases within two or three days of each other. Cattlemen who have taken several months to drive a herd to the southern markets will pack their stock into trucks and convey it within the week.