LONELY HIGHWAY

A DRIVE ALONG THE NYANGUMARTA HIGHWAY IS AN ISOLATED AND SELF-SUFFICIENT JOURNEY THAT WILL TEST BOTH YOU AND YOUR 4X4 AS YOU CROSS THE GREAT SANDY DESERT

- GLENN MARSHALL

CUTTING through the heart of Australia's second-largest desert is an abandoned oil exploration track now known as the Nyangumarta Highway, formerly named the Kidson Track. This remote track takes you from the white sands of Eighty Mile Beach to the remote Indigenous community Kunawarritji on the Canning Stock Route, and the country is spectacular. The track changes from washed-out gravel, overgrown in sections, to red sand stretches through colourful dunes and spinifex. Don't expect to see anyone else out here - this epic track is rarely travelled.

Eighty Mile Beach is an excellent place to spend a couple of days kicking back, and while the caravan park has great facilities, it's the beach driving opportunities that raise the bar. The tidal movement is significant here so most days the beachfront is nice and wide with a mix of hard and soft sand, although the soft stuff isn't likely to see you bogged.

It's when the tide is high that you have the best chance to catch threadfin, blue nose salmon and mulloway from the beach. Access to the Nyangumarta Highway is only 1.4km north of the Eighty Mile Beach turn-off and is well signposted.

The first section of the Nyangumarta Highway is wide and smooth, which I found surprising until I spotted a 'grader ahead' road sign. On UHF channel 40 (the channel for this track) the grader driver told me that once past the grid, I'd enter the permit zone, and the road would narrow a little bit before deteriorating severely further along, and that it would be a challenge to get through.

That was music to my ears.