Perth to Dongara new road due to open

hi john
well you might have to eat bass instead lol
cheers

Hi Willem

In around 1991 we came back from a mid west holiday via the coast road which took us to Cervantes. This was back in the days before they'd cleaned up all the squats and shacks along the beaches. It branched off the Brand Highway near a fishing shack shantytown Cliff Head. Further down the coast Green Head was just beautiful. I can't remember if the road was sealed or not, but it was a good road and probably a sealed one. Going on to see the Pinnacles, we continued on through Grey, where the residents were all out fishing. We made it further south through the dunes, which was tediously slow, but as we didn't know the tides we opted out of the beach run, and found the ongoing track too overgrown to trust and it was getting late in the day, so we returned to Cervantes and back to the highway. It will be a nice alternative route north now the road is complete.

Mh

Willem, click on the link on my post above and check the map there.

Hi Gone Bush,

did that, but it shows (and is described accordingly) that the new road ends in Cervantes. So Cervantes to Jurrien Bay is (on bitumen) still only via the Brand Highway.
I got confused as The West reported:

From Sunday WA motorists will be able to drive from Perth to Dongara uninterrupted along the coast when the final stage of the Indian Ocean Drive finally opens.

Looks to me that there is still a bit to do before it is a complete coastal Indian Ocean Drive.

Will be heading there in November so we'll see.
Have to endure the bloody wet weather in Germany till then. Autumn is early this year.

I don't see the problem Willem, as the rest of the Indian Ocean Drive has been open just about for ever from Cliff Head to Cervantes, and as i recall, was probably bitumen when we travelled it in 1991 - if not, it was as good as a bitumen road. The new road now links it to Lancelin, on a route which was once a series of sand tracks up and down the dunes, with a low tide beach run near Wedge Island.

Mh

Irrelevant to the thread, but i just realised it was 1988 or 1989, not 1991.

Mh

Jurien Bay to Cervantes section was completed about 1999. I was living about 50m from the Jurien Bay end when it was being constructed. For some reason they only ever worked on this end on Sunday mornings.

The section from Jurien to Leeman was already open when I moved to Jurien in 1998, although not that old.

The new section from Cervantes to Lancelin has seen a change in the intersection near Cervantes. Now the road from Jurien goes directly through, whilst the old Cervantes road now has a T junction in two places forming a dog leg ie it is not a cross road.

Apparently, official opening is this coming Sunday, 19th September.

Scanned from Hema maps:

Image Could Not Be Found

The dotted line from Lancelin to Cervantes (Thirsty Point) is what has just been completed. The rest from Cervantes to a point 32kms south of Dongara (where it intercepts Brand Highway) is already bitumen.

Thanks for the clarification and on the spot report Wayne. Looking at the 1978 printed map book i was using at the time, it appears we went on a road shown as unbitumised (as at 1978) from Cliff Head down the coastline to Green Head, then inland a little to head south to the Jurien road in the vicinity of Cockleshell Gully and Mt Lesueur, then from Jurien direct to Cervantes and on to the Pinnacles. The track north from Jurien to Sandy Point (where my b.i.l. once had a holiday beach shack) appears to terminate at Sandy Point and not link to Green Head (as at 1978). At the time (1988 or 89) i reasoned that any track showing on the old map book was pretty good and had proved that way previously, so did not count on meeting the dune tracks south of Grey :( The track we took went right through Grey on the coastline, whereas the new road is a little inland with an access to Grey, otherwise seems to follow the old route.

Hi Willem; all the more reason to get over here and explore it for yourself :)

Mh