I see contributors in this site asking or posting remarks on the
Great Central Road. I've never travelled it.
But a number of years ago we did the
Gary Junction Road from
Alice Springs to
Marble Bar and on to
Port Hedland. It appears to me that not a great number of people travel it.
I found that diesel fuel was easy to get, if not a bit exxy, and the road pretty good. It was even better from the W.A. border to The Canning, as we were following graders working westwards.
The communities we stopped at to get fuel were a disappointment (dirty), though the stores sold a pretty good selection of stuff.
What I did enjoy was the vast expanses of desert oak in W.A. and the herds of camels near Jupiter
Well.
One of the advantages of using this road is that you can duck back south down the Canning S.R. or conversely head north to beautiful Hall's Creek.
We had to get permits of course. And there was not that much oncoming traffic, probably five or six vehicles each day, and no trucks. So dust wasn't a problem.
We did meet a couple from
Port Hedland who work there, but came from
Bowen in Qld. They told me that they travel
home each year via this road and the Donohue Firetrail, stating that it was quicker than following the bitumen, and as they had a FWD they could travel at the same speed anyway. Interesting?
Dick