The Connie Sue Highway is an outback road that runs from Rawlinna on the Trans-Australian Railway to the Aboriginal community of Warburton on the Great Central Road. Approximately 650 km (400 mi) long and running north-south, it lies entirely in the state of Western Australia and crosses the Nullarbor Plain and the Great Victoria Desert. Though officially named the Rawlinna-Warburton Road, it is better known as the Connie Sue, after the daughter of Len Beadell, a 20th-century surveyor and bushman.
Approximately halfway along this route is Neale Junction, 172 km (107 mi) west of Ilkurlka, where the highway intersects with another outback road, the Anne Beadell Highway. Anne was Connie Sue's mother.
This road, like many Len Beadell built, is a "highway" in name only. It is remote and does not carry regular traffic. There is no available ground water and it is one of the longest stretches in Australia between fuel pumps. The only place on the highway that sells fuel is Warburton. There is no fuel for sale at Rawlinna. The closest fuel available to Rawlinna is on the Eyre Highway more than 100 km (62 mi) to the south at Caiguna or Cocklebiddy.
This road is not considered suitable for unprepared travellers, and a permit is required to travel through Warburton
Famous quotes containing the words sue and/or highway:
“Apart, we think we wish ourselves together,
Yet sue for solitude upon our meetings....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)