Newman-Marble Bar Road

G'day Rowdy6032

Amazing to think that this State government has set aside any dollars to upgrade this road, must be an election comming up.


Seriously though, this (the original Great Northern Highway) has always been a sub standard road and it seems now that the mining industry is firmly entrenched on Roy Hill and Bonney Downs stations the road now needs attention.


Many people have come to a grizzly end on this road in the past and the government did nothing to make the road surface safer for traffic or people who must use it, many can't actually take an alternative route.


I travelled the Newman to Roy Hill section of the road just today ~ addmittedly the surface is tar sealed, so there is next to no dust, but the actual surface is as rough and corrugated as it ever was ~ only with a tar seal.


The heavy haulage is more since the mining side of life in the region has ramped up, so I can only guess the $20 mil will be blown in repairs to the existing surface.






Safe Travels :

probablly changed a bit more recently but the main problem with this road i persoanlly saw was really bad drivers

1) case one we were about 1/2 an our out of newman doing the company imposed 90kmh speed limit when I spotted a fast approaching ute coming up behind.
I took my attention off of him to the blind corner i was approaching planning to let him past after rounding the corner.............

next thing there he was overtaking me on the corner!

it was a telstra ute.

was about another 40 minutes approaching a dog leg through a creek we spotted wild fishtails for about 150m and the telstra ute on its side

Guy was alright but nothing more than stupid idiotic speeding and worse carteless driving got him unstuck

2) Guy was seeing how fast a triton would do (150kph) when he lost control and fishtailed ending up out in the bush. Luckily by then hed wiped enough speed off

I managed to travel this road plenty of times without nearly having an issue, it was a pretty good road

Thanks Rowdy for the input. Always useful to get follow ups. Re-assessing route again now after seeing pics of heavy equipment etc.
Its hard to gauge as to whether we'll save any time or infact, lose it, by going Marble Bar, over the GNH. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm......a dilema!!!!

Rowdy,
This morning's west has an article similar but this time it's 40 mil on the Bindi Bindi bends, between Wubin and New Norcia.
Thinking that after travelling this section many many times that it should have a bit of priority over Newman Marble bar road, as all the photo's Joe has posted on quite a few occasions of these "huge" loads have all travelled through that "death stretch " of road.
But then again we do have an election coming don't we.

Cheers
Paul