Word: bitumen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...whom you talk to, Australia's Highway 1 is the world's longest road, its longest continuous highway, or the longest without crossing a national border. Whatever the qualification, there's no doubt it's long. Some 15,000 km of multi-lane freeway, dual carriageway, two-lane bitumen and corrugated dirt, it circles the Australian mainland, never far from the coast, and bisects Tasmania...
...whom you talk to, Australia's Highway 1 is the world's longest road, its longest continuous highway, or the longest without crossing a national border. Whatever the qualification, there's no doubt it's long. Some 15,000 km of multi-lane freeway, dual carriageway, two-lane bitumen and corrugated dirt, it circles the Australian mainland, never far from the coast, and bisects Tasmania...
There's an unbending stretch of bitumen, but little else here tells of human intervention. Several hours of red dirt and hardy scrub and 240 km north of Port Hedland, a gray-haired multitude has gathered at the end of a gravel road off the highway. All are wearing shorts, some carry rods and reels. Hundreds of time-rich wanderers are fishing or collecting shells on Eighty Mile Beach in the midday sun, while their well-traveled 4WDs and homes on wheels rest in the caravan park behind the dunes. These gray nomads jest that they are part...
...blast hurled concrete debris, bitumen wrenched from the road and shrapnel from what appeared to be artillery shells over a radius of three city blocks. It gouged a 2-m-deep, 8-m-wide crater into the street; the shock wave shattered windows streets away, including all those on the al-Hamra hotel's east side...
...rusting sign sprouts from the roadside jungle. "restricted," it reads in washed-out blood-red letters. "No Go Zone by order of the Mekamui government." The paint may be faded, but the warning is current. Beyond it, a jumble of petrol drums, sticks and signs blocks the narrow bitumen strip, and in the shadows a group of young men stand guard. For most people, Morgan Junction is as close as they dare come to the island's forbidden zone...