It has been almost six months since major funding was announced to seal one of WA's most notorious tracks, but truck drivers say the condition of the Tanami Road has never been worse.
The Tanami Road is the most direct link between WA's Kimberley and southern parts of the Northern Territory, running 1035 kilometres from Halls Creek to Alice Springs.
While $500 million in federal and state funding was recently announced to seal sections of the road, transporters say it has been virtually condemned by industry due to an apparent lack of maintenance.
"It had deteriorated to a point where I would say it's not a road anymore," Mitchell's Livestock Transport chief executive John Mitchell said.
"The potential for a catastrophe for an individual is just too high."
Mr Mitchell's company operates across WA, and uses the Tanami about twice a year to cart cattle from the East Kimberley to Broome for export.
On the company’s most recent venture down the unsealed track in August, drivers were forced to travel as slowly as 18 kilometres an hour for their own safety, and to avoid damaging their vehicles.
Despite this, Mr Mitchell said vehicles were suffering significant damage.
"Wearing out things, things falling off, things that would happen over, [you know] a two-year period, happening in a week. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
“As an industry we all pay before we do our job.
"It’s wrong that we’ve got to pay while we’re doing it and we have the mental and physical demands on our drivers and the livestock are compromised as well.
“You’ve got people that won’t go there.”
Pastoral plans in doubt
With trucking companies reluctant to travel on the destructive road, pastoralists are struggling to find transporters to move cattle from their remote stations to market.
Haydn Sale runs Argyle Cattle Company, which recently completed its first muster at Billiluna Station, located about 150km south of Halls Creek off the Tanami Road.
It's just the second year the company has run cattle at the Aboriginal Lands Trust property, and the first commercial-scale muster to take place at the property since the 1970s.
Mr Sale fears the degradation of the Tanami could halt his long-term plans for the station's revival.
"There's some beautiful pastoral country down there that's just really difficult to make work at the moment because of the state of the road," he said.
"We're even tossing up whether we can send cattle back down there, because I don't know who we're going to get to take them down.
"It's really difficult to get people to do these jobs."
Mr Sale said the worsening condition of the road had the company reconsidering an extension of its agistment plans beyond next year.
"We would weigh that up pretty heavily as to whether we would want to continue that agreement if we can't viably get the stock in and out," he said.
"That's a pretty big concern for us."
Maintenance challenges
While the Tanami is one of the main routes from the Kimberley into the Northern Territory, it is up to the Halls Creek Shire to maintain the 313km stretch of road on the WA side of the border.
With the shire covering more than 140,000 square kilometres but a limited rates base to draw from, Halls Creek CEO Phillip Cassell said the road’s upkeep was a challenge.
“As tight as the Shire’s resources and budgets are, the Shire has committed and will continue to commit a large amount of resources to ensure safe and continued access along the Tanami and associated access roads,” he said.
Mr Cassell said the Shire recently spent half a million dollars on upgrading a small stretch of the Tanami, along with several access roads off the track.
He said a further $2.2 million was set aside for further maintenance to the Tanami and access roads in the upcoming financial year, with works to begin within the next six weeks.
A Main Roads spokesperson said it had provided the Shire of Halls Creek with about $250,000 a year over the past five years as part of the Aboriginal Remote Access Roads program.
An additional $440,000 in State and Federal funding has also been granted for minor maintenance activities.
Subject to approvals, Main Roads will begin sealing the first 20 kilometres of the Tanami next year.
