[Index]

Leonard BEADELL (1923 - 1995)

Surveyor, road builder, bushman, OAM, BEM

Children	Self + Spouses	Parents	Grandparents	Greatgrandparents
	Leonard BEADELL (1923 - 1995)	Fred Algernon BEADELL (1889 - )	Edwin BEADELL (1861 - 1936)	Frederick BEADELL
			Marie Margaret HIRD ( - 1937)	Robert John HIRD
				Barbara (HIRD)
		Viola Pearl MACKAY (1889 - 1949)	Herbert MACKAY
			Sophia Alice (TUTLEY) TUTTY

Pic 5. OAM, BEM, F.I.E.M.S Leonard (Len) Beadell was a surveyor, road builder, bushman, artist and author, responsible for constructing over 6,000 km (3,700 mi) of roads and opening up isolated desert areas – some 2.5 million square kilometres (970 thousand square miles) – of central Australia from 1947 to 1963. Born in West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Beadell is sometimes called "the last true Australian explorer". Wikipedia Parents - Viola Pearl Beadell geb MacKay and Fred Algernon Beadell Front Inscription Plaque: LEN BEADELL O.A.M., B.E.M., F.I.E.M.S. (Aust) Surveyor, Explorer, Roadmaker A Unique Character Who Surveying Skills And Endurance Enabled Him To Open Up The Outback For All People Never "Too Long In The Bush" Plaque: This Plaque Commemorates The Lifetime Achievements Of A True Australian LEN BEADELL 1923 - 1995 O.A.M., B.E.M., F.I.E.M.S. (Aust) Len Beadall Arrived In This Area On 12 March 1947 To Commence The Surveys That Ultimately Resulted In The Woomera Rocket Range, Emu And Maralinga Atomic Bomb Test Sites And Over 6,000 Kilometres Of Desert Roads. From 1947 To 1964 Len And The Gunbarrel Road Construction Party Were Exposed To Harsh And Lonely Conditions In The Making Of The Roads. These Roads Covered The Centreline Of Range Across Largely Unexplored Deserts Northwest From Woomera To The Indian Ocean. Len Was A Unique Character With An Irrepressible Sense Of Humour That Carried Him Through Life.

b. 21 Apr 1923 at West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Australia

d. 12 May 1995 at Elizabeth Vale, South Australia, Australia aged 72

Near Relatives of Leonard BEADELL (1923 - 1995)
Relationship	Person	Born	Birth Place	Died	Death Place	Age
Grandfather	Edwin BEADELL	1861		1936	Lane Cove, New South Wales, Australia	75
Grandmother	Marie Margaret HIRD			11 May 1937	Chatswood, New South Wales, Australia
Grandfather	Herbert MACKAY		Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Grandmother	Sophia Alice (TUTLEY) TUTTY		Co Wicklow, Ireland
Father	Fred Algernon BEADELL	1889	Marrickville, Sydney, Australia
Mother	Viola Pearl MACKAY	1889	Brisbane, Queensland, Australia	1949	Burwood, New South Wales, Australia	60
Self	Leonard BEADELL	21 Apr 1923	West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Australia	12 May 1995	Elizabeth Vale, South Australia, Australia	72
Aunt	Muriel Olive BEADELL	1881	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Aunt	Ethel Ivy BEADELL	1883	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	1976		93
Uncle	Frank L BEADELL	1885	Glebe, New South Wales, Australia
Uncle	Herbert MACKAY	1870	Queensland, Australia
Aunt	Ada Rosalie MACKAY	1871	Queensland, Australia
Aunt	Isabel Frances MACKAY	14 Feb 1873	Brisbane, Queensland, Australia	08 Oct 1953		80
Uncle	Henry John ATKINSON	09 Jul 1864		06 Jul 1934	Ingham, Queensland, Australia	69
Aunt	Emily Florence Edridge MACKAY	1875	Queensland, Australia
Aunt	Alice Coralie (Dan) MACKAY	1877	Queensland, Australia
Uncle	Allan Robert Fancourt MCDONALD
Uncle	Herbert Douglas MACKAY	1880	Queensland, Australia
Uncle	Alfred Reay MACKAY	1883	Queensland, Australia
Aunt	Ruby Lilian MACKAY	1885	Queensland, Australia
Uncle	Eric Norton SMITH
Uncle	Glen Roy MACKAY	1887	Queensland, Australia
Cousin	James Herbert (Jim) ATKINSON	09 May 1900	Queensland, Australia	12 Jan 1980	Queensland, Australia	79
Cousin	Coralie Frances ATKINSON	1902	Queensland, Australia	1920		18
Cousin	Henry Delwyn ATKINSON	10 Dec 1904	Queensland, Australia	08 Jun 1974		69
Cousin	John Reay ATKINSON	20 Oct 1910	Queensland, Australia	02 Dec 1949		39
Cousin	George Ian Fancourt MCDONALD	1913	Queensland, Australia
Cousin	Roy Allan Fancourt MCDONALD	18 Apr 1917	Miles, Queensland, Australia	03 Jul 1987		70
Cousin	Shirley Norton SMITH	abt 1917		19 Jul 2014		97

Events in Leonard BEADELL (1923 - 1995)'s life
Date	Age	Event	Place	Notes	Src
21 Apr 1923		Leonard BEADELL was born	West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Australia
1949	26	Death of mother Viola Pearl MACKAY (aged 60)	Burwood, New South Wales, Australia	21445/1949
12 May 1995	72	Leonard BEADELL died	Elizabeth Vale, South Australia, Australia
		Burial	Woomera, South Australia, Australia

Personal Notes:

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/beadell-leonard-len-29681 Leonard Beadell (1923–1995), surveyor and author, was born on 21 April 1923 at Pennant Hills West, Sydney, only son and elder child of New South Wales-born Fred Algernon Beadell, orchardist, and his Queensland-born wife Viola Pearl, née MacKay. Len attended Gladesville and Burwood primary schools and Sydney Grammar School. From an early age he spent many weekends camping with his scout group and developed a keen interest in surveying and navigation. During World War II he worked for the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage, and Drainage Board (MWSDB), before beginning full-time duty in the Citizen Military Forces in December 1941. Beadell transferred to the Australian Imperial Force in September 1942. With the 2nd (1942–43) and 8th (1943) Field Survey and the 6th Topographical Survey (1943–45) companies, he served in Papua (October 1942–November 1943) and New Guinea (March–December 1945). Back in Australia, he continued survey work, assisting a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research mapping project in western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. In April 1946 he was sent to the South Australian outback to commence a survey of the Woomera rocket-testing range as part of the Anglo-Australian Joint Project. He was discharged from the army in December 1948, having risen to the rank of warrant officer, class two, and resumed work at the MWSDB. In 1950 he accepted a position with the Long Range Weapons Establishment and returned to Woomera. Lacking formal qualifications as a surveyor, he was employed as an assistant experimental officer. He completed mapping of the rocket range and surveyed sites for observation posts along the rocket firing-line for a distance of five hundred miles (800 km). In June 1952 Beadell was dispatched to find a location in the desert west of Woomera for the British military to test nuclear weapons. He identified Emu Field as a suitable site for Operation Totem and two atomic bombs were detonated there in October 1953. Praised by L. C. Lucas, director of construction, for his technical skill as well as his ‘initiative, guts, common sense, and bushmanship’ (NAA D4233), he had been promoted to range reconnaissance officer in May. When Emu proved unsuitable for further tests, Beadell set off in his battered Land Rover, accompanied by (Sir) William (Baron) Penney, Britain’s chief superintendent of armaments research, and found another location, later named Maralinga, where the British conducted seven nuclear tests in 1956 and 1957. During the 1950s and early 1960s, with a trusted team of road-makers, nicknamed the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party, Beadell established a network of graded tracks across the central deserts, linking the observation posts, meteorological stations, and other facilities required for the rocket tests. His roads effectively opened up more than nine hundred thousand square miles (2.3 million km2) of the outback to non-Aboriginal people. At first their use was restricted to military personnel, but by the end of the 1960s they were being used by oil and mineral exploration companies, scientists, patrol officers, and adventurous tourists. Following the tracks Beadell blazed across the deserts later became a rite of passage for many four-wheel-drive enthusiasts. On 1 July 1961 Beadell married Anne Rosalind Matthews at All Souls’ Church of England, St Peters, and settled at Salisbury, on the outskirts of Adelaide. Len, often absent for long periods, named outback ‘highways’ and road junctions after his wife and three children. In 1965 he published his first book, Too Long in the Bush. A vivid and humorous account of his exploits in the outback and illustrated with his own photographs and sketches, it sold well, and led to Blast the Bush (1967), Bush Bashers (1971), and others. Well known as a raconteur and an accomplished public speaker, he presented hundreds of talks to organisations across the country and later led outback tour groups. By the mid-1960s Beadell’s years of arduous travel and poor diet in the bush had taken their toll. Diagnosed with chronic hepatitis, he spent significant periods on leave and in 1968 was deemed unfit for further service in the interior. In August he was formally transferred to the design and workshop division at Salisbury as a drafting assistant. In 1984 he presented evidence to the royal commission into British nuclear tests in Australia. Despite the scrutiny and criticism of the tests, he looked back on that period as one of the most exciting of his life. He retired from the then Defence Science and Technology Organisation in 1988. Tough and independent, Beadell was an expert navigator, well versed in bushcraft and survival skills, and dedicated to his job. In his books and lectures he portrayed himself as a fearless explorer, venturing into an outback wilderness never before traversed by humans. He rarely acknowledged the achievements of nineteenth-century European explorers of the western deserts and, more significantly, he gave scant attention to the presence of the Aboriginal people who had occupied those deserts for thousands of years. His books are entertaining, but not always historically accurate; his writing drew on a tradition of colonial exploration into inhospitable places. Beadell had been awarded the BEM in 1957 and the OAM in 1988. Survived by his wife, and their son and two daughters, he died on 12 May 1995 at Elizabeth Vale and was cremated. A mountain in the Gibson Desert is named after him, as well as a subspecies of mallee eucalypt, an asteroid, and a public library at Salisbury. Life Summary [details] Birth 21 April, 1923 Pennant Hills, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Death 12 May, 1995 (aged 72) Elizabeth Vale, South Australia, Australia Cause of Death unknown Education Gladesville Public School (NSW) Burwood Primary (Sydney) Sydney Grammar School Occupation autobiographer/memoirist explorer road engineer soldier surveyor Military Service World War II Awards British Empire Medal Medal of the Order of Australia Advance Australia Award Legacies asteroid 3161 Beadell Eucalyptus canescens subsp. beadellii Len Beadell Library (Salisbury, Adelaide) Mount Beadell (Gibson Desert, WA) Workplaces Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage (Sydney) Long Range Weapons Establishment, Woomera https://www.lenbeadell.com.au/ Len Beadell A Short Biography LEN BEADELL, OAM, BEM, FIEMS (Aust.) 1923 - 1995 Len Beadell has often been referred to as the 'The Last Australian Explorer' because of his lifetime of work surveying, mapping and creating access to a vast portion of the Australian Outback. Len was a young man in the Australian Army when he was asked to "start a rocket range or something" as he would recall later. It was a job that would have been akin to a prison sentence to some, but Len later acknowledged he would have done it for free had anyone ever bothered to ask him. Living in the bush and surveying was deeply in his blood - a favourite past time which began years earlier when he joined the 1st Burwood Scout Group as a young lad in 1930. It gave him experience in surveying, going on many weekend survey trips with his Surveyor Scout Leader, Mr John 'Skip' Richmond. It also brought out the best in his pioneering spirit. Len regarded ‘Skip’ Richmond as his mentor. Len later stated “He showed me it was possible to enjoy all the pleasures of the bush (particularly camping) while at the same time still doing something useful and constructive (that is, surveying).” These survey trips were conducted within a 150 kilometre radius of Sydney, mainly around Kiama and in the Blue Mountains. Skip would pick up the willing helpers on a Saturday morning in his bull-nosed Morris and return them home late on Sunday night. The children brought only a small back pack and a frypan. They loved camping in the bush, cooking (and burning) porridge, trudging up and down hills carrying theodolites and other equipment, and searching for old survey markers, as if on a treasure hunt. The purpose behind each excursion was to establish a trigonometric network for the Water Board and to plan the location and pipeline between major dams supplying water to Sydney. It was an experience which sparked in Len a lifetime passion for surveying and bush living, the crowning achievement of which came in 1947 when he was tasked by the Australian government to locate and survey the site for a rocket testing range in northern South Australia, the Centre Line of which initially stretched across West Australia almost to the Indian Ocean. The town that was the base for the range was later named Woomera. Len’s work included the initial Woomera airstrip, town and launch sites surveys. In the years to follow, he led a gang of roadmakers to create over 6,500 kilometres of access roads for scientific observations relating to Woomera, Emu, Maralinga and the subsequent worldwide geodetic survey. The best known of these roads is the Gunbarrel Highway which runs from near the Stuart Highway west to Carnegie Station, a distance of 1500 kilometres.

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