Those good ole days .....

rockylizard · Guru

Those good ole days .....

GaryKelly · Guru

Ah yes, the days of the Redex Trials and Beetles, Peugeot 203s and Jack Gelignite Murray!

Oxley · Veteran Member

Well it wasnt 200 years ago when going from Sydney to Parramatta was a 3-day horse and buggy ride.

I did it in my youth in under an hour, on a bicycle.

Rip and Rosie · Guru

Oxley wrote:

Well it wasnt 200 years ago when going from Sydney to Parramatta was a 3-day horse and buggy ride.
I did it in my youth in under an hour, on a bicycle.

I hope that's a typo, otherwise I want to know what they were up to along the way (although I have no doubt that some folk took this time for the journey). 3 days is a long time to travel 24 kms (14 miles).

In 1823 the first stage coach in Australia ran between Sydney and Parramatta. The stage left the city at 7am, arrived in Parramatta at 9:30am and left Parramatta for the return journey at 4pm.

Wombat 280 · Guru

More history on the Pacific Highway

PACIFIC HIGHWAY (NSW)
List of Notable Events

Pre-1920s:

1879 - Original bridge over Dawson River, Cundletown
1882 - Original bridge over Lansdowne River, Coopernook
1892 - Original bridge over Camden Haven River
1900 - Old bridge over Macleay River, Kempsey
1902 - Old bridge over Wilson River at Telegraph Point

1920s:

7 Aug 1928 - Proclaimed State Highway No. 10 and named 'North Coast Highway' between Hexham and Tweed Heads
9 Sep 1928 - Deviation and old bridge over Kalang River at Urunga
1929 - Ulmarra deviation

1930s:

1930s - Highway relocated in Taree
1931 - Bridge over Brunswick River, Mullumbimby
29 May 1931 - Named Pacific Highway & extended from Hexham to North Sydney
29 May 1931 - Route altered to follow direct route between Bangalow and Ewingsdale over St Helena Hill
Jun 1931 - Reconstruction between Murwillumbah & Tweed Heads completed
12 Dec 1931 - Bridge over Nambucca River, Macksville
1932 - Old bridge over Stewarts River
1932 - Korora Deviation replaced "Old Coast Road" route between Korora and Moonee Beach
1933 - Bridge over Lansdowne River, Coopernook
1933 - Bridge over Dawson River, Cundletown
Sep 1933 - Old bridge over Myall River, Bulahdelah
Mar 1934 - Dirty Creek Range deviation (original)
Dec 1934 - Boyds Bay Bridge over Terranora Creek, Tweed Heads
Nov 1935 - Old Raleigh Bridge over Bellinger River at Raleigh.
Jun 1935 - Mororo Bridge over the Clarence River North Arm
1936 - Long Cutting deviation, south of Urunga
1936 - Five deviations completed in Tintenbar Shire
Jul 1936 - Old Barneys Point Bridge over Tweed River at Banora Point.
1937 - Martins Bridge over Manning River, Taree
Dec 1938 - Burringbar Range reconstruction completed, including deviation at Billinudgel
1939 - Herons Creek Deviation (bridges over Herons Creek not completed till 1963)
1939 - Concrete pavement completed between South Grafton & Ulmarra

1940s:

1940 - Second bridge over Camden Haven River
1940 - Bulahdelah to Wang Wauk section constructed
1940 - Causeway over Wallamba River, Nabiac
9 Mar 1945 - route altered between Tyagarah and Billinudgel, passing through Brunswick Heads
1949 - Reconstruction between Repton and Boambee completed

1950s:

1950 - Boambee deviation
Jun 1950 - Repton Bypass
Aug 1952 - Re-gazetted between 12 Mile Creek and Taree via Karuah, Buladelah and Nabiac
Dec 1952 - Hexham Bridge over Hunter River replaced ferry
1953 - Deviation at Cassons Creek, north of Corindi Beach
1954 - Bridge over Brunswick River, Brunswick Heads
1954 - Fernvale Deviation opened to traffic
1955 - National Route 1 signage erected from Brisbane to Adelaide
Dec 1955 - Sealing completed between Bulahdelah and Wang Wauk
Dec 1955 - Booral Rd (interim highway from 1955 to 1963) sealing completed
Dec 1955 - Fernvale Deviation completed
1956 - Deviation on approach to old Shark Creek bridge, near Maclean
1957 - 0.4mi long deviation north of Woolgoolga
Jun 1957 - Wang Wauk to Bundacree Creek reconstruction and sealing
Dec 1957 - Bridge over Karuah River, Karuah
1958 - Deviations on Jones Island
1958 - Coopernook deviation
1958 - McGraths Creek deviation, south of Urunga
2 Apr 1958 - Pacific Highway sealing completed
2 Apr 1958 - Bungwahl Creek to Purfleet reconstruction and sealing
Mar 1959 - Bridge over Wallamba River, Nabiac
Nov 1959 - Bridge over Macleay River, Kempsey

1960s:

Early 1960s - Nabiac deviation
Dec 1961 - Dennis Bridge over Hastings River and deviation, replacing Blackmans Point Ferry
Mar 1962 - Bridge over Balickera Channel
1963 - Bridge over Ghinni Ghinni Creek, Jones Island
1963 - Herons Creek Bypass
24 Dec 1963 - Karuah to Bulahdelah reconstruction, completing realignment between 12 Mile Creek and Taree
Apr 1964 - Bridge over Richmond River at Wardell and deviation, replaced Burns Point Ferry
1965 - Deviation on south side of Myall River at Bulahdelah
1965 - Deviation on southern approach to Macksville
7 May 1965 - Woolgoolga deviation
1966 - Realignment through Bulahdelah
1966 - Deviation at Cunninghams Creek, north of Woolgoolga
Aug 1966 - Harwood Bridge over Clarence River South Arm. Replaced last remaining ferry crossing on Pacific Hwy
1968 - Bridge over Coldstream River
1968 - Newrybar deviation
Jul 1968 - Grahamstown Dam Deviation
Nov 1969 - Bridge over Myall River, Bulahdelah (replaced Sep 1933 bridge)

1970s:

Early 1970s - Balickera Channel to 12 Mile Creek Rd reconstruction
1970 - Proclaimed a motorway from Coffs Harbour to Grafton
1971 - Deviations at Tabbimoble completed
1971 - Korora Deviation
21 May 1971 - Lower Warrell Creek Bridge
13 Mar 1972 - Kalang River Bridge, Urunga
1973 - Tumbulgum deviation
Apr 1974 - Bridge over Wilson River, Telegraph Point (replaced 1902 bridge)
25 Jun 1974 - Newee Creek Deviation
1975 - Telegraph Point to Cooperabung Range deviation
1976 - Sandy beach deviation
Aug 1976 - Reinforced concrete pavement at Clybucca Flat
1978 - Deviation at Two Mile Creek, near Moorland
1978 - Cooperabung Range deviation
1978 - Dual carriageways at Oak Ave, near Chinderah

1980s:

1980s - Eungai Deviation
1980 - Condong deviation
1980 - Double Crossing Creek deviation, north of Coffs Harbour
1980 - Corindi Beach deviation
1980 - Marshalls Creek reconstruction, Billinudgel
Dec 1980 - Bellwood Deviation at Nambucca Heads
1982 - Kerr St realignment, Ballina
1982 - Tyagarah Deviation, replaced level crossing
1982 - Burringbar railway bridge
1983 - Eungai railway bridge
Jun 1983 - Deep Creek Deviation
1984 - Cooperabung Range Deviation
1984 - Deviation at Jacky Bulbin, north of Mororo
1984 - Sextons Hill dual carriageways
1985 - Wedding Bells Deviation, south of Corindi Beach
1985 - Boyds Bay Bridge over Terranora Creek, Tweed Heads
Jul 1985 - Tweed Heads Bypass Stage 1
1986 - Smiths Creek Deviation, Kundabung
1986 - Shark Creek bridge and deviation
1986 - Deviation at Devils Pulpit State Forest
Dec 1986 - Wang Wauk River bridge
Dec 1986 - Chatsworth Deviation
Mar 1987 - Dirty Creek Range deviation
Apr 1987 - Hexham Bridge duplication
Sep 1987 - Reconstruction and realignment just south of Maria River
Nov 1987 - Englands Rd to Arthur St duplication, Coffs Harbour
Dec 1987 - Warrell Creek Deviation
Sep 1988 - Maria River duplication
Apr 1989 - Deviation from Alipou Creek to Swan Creek, north of Grafton

1990s:

Jan 1990 - Tomago Rd to Masonite Rd duplication
Mar 1990 - Herons Creek Deviation (Ryans Rd to 1km north of Oxley Hwy)
1991 - Greiner Government began Pacific Hwy upgrading
Jun 1991 - Swan Creek duplication
Aug 1991 - Possum Brush dual carriageways
Apr 1992 - Christmas Creek deviation
Nov 1992 - Tweed Heads Bypass Stage 2 (commenced May '86)
May 1993 - Possum Brush dual carriageways extended south to Failford Rd and north to Rainbow Flat
Jun 1993 - Cowper Deviation
Nov 1993 - Herons Creek Deviation (Herons Creek to Ryans Rd)
Dec 1993 - Mororo Bridge duplication
Dec 1994 - Bangalow Bypass (1st carriageway)
Sep 1996 - Federally funded Pacific Highway Upgrade commenced
Oct 1996 - Barneys Point Bridge (replaced 1936 bridge)
Nov 1996 - Chinderah Bypass
Dec 1997 - Taree Bypass Stage 1 (commenced 1993)
Dec 1997 - Korora Hill reconstruction (commenced Jan '97)
Dec 1997 - Bangalow Bypass duplication
May 1998 - Gap Road Upgrade
17 Sep 1998 - Raleigh Bypass (commenced Jan '95)
Jun 1998 - Brunswick Heads Bypass (1st carriageway)
Oct 1998 - Ewingsdale to Tyagarah duplication
Dec 1998 - Raymond Terrace Bypass (commenced Nov '93)
10 Dec 1998 - Wang Wauk to Bundacree Creek duplication (commenced Aug '97)
Dec 1998 - Eungai Deviation duplication (new southbound carriageway)
Mar 1999 - Eungai Deviation duplication (reconstruction of original carriageway)
Oct 1999 - Bulahdelah to Coolongolook Freeway

2000 and onwards:

Apr 2000 - Taree Bypass Stage 2
Jun 2000 - Tynedale realignment (commenced Feb '99)
Aug 2000 - Bray St to Arthur St, Coffs Harbour upgrade
Dec 2000 - Raymond Terrace to Karuah duplication (commenced Aug '98)
Dec 2000 - Ewingsdale Interchange
29 Jul 2001 - Coolongolook to Wang Wauk dual carriageways
19 Dec 2001 - Tandys Lane Deviation
May 2001 - Lyons Road to Englands Road Upgrade
6 Aug 2002 - Yelgun to Chinderah Freeway
Jun 2004 - Halfway Creek Upgrade
Sep 2004 - Karuah Bypass (commenced June '02)
5 Aug 2005 - Taree to Coopernook duplication
*mid-2006 - Coopernook Bypass (commenced Feb '02)
*2007 - Brunswick Heads to Yelgun Upgrade (co

-- Edited by Wombat 280 on Monday 6th of May 2013 08:50:04 PM

-- Edited by Wombat 280 on Monday 6th of May 2013 08:53:17 PM

neilnruth · Guru

We used to have to sleep in the back of a Morris ute when Mum and Dad travelled the Pacific Highway to Kempsey and it wasn't sealed all the way! And that's not even 70 years ago!

Grams · Guru

I get excited when the dirt road to my daughters house gets graded, after its lovely to drive on. But I never complain about the roads, as I have seen worse. I'm not in any hurry to get there, so road works don't bother me. And I also drive to the conditions, unlike others I know of...

Wombat 280 · Guru

The history of the Pacific Highway from Sydney to Brisbane makes for a great read. The last bit of sealing wasn't completed till 1958 and looking at it today looks like it has never undergone resealing since.

Initially, the primary mode of transport of the coastal areas between Sydney and Brisbane was by boat. From the roads radiating out from the port towns, the intervening hills were eventually crossed to create a continuous route along the coast, but this did not occur until the first decade of the 20th century. By contrast a continuous inland route from Newcastle to Brisbane via the tablelands had been in existence since the 1840s. A direct coastal route between Sydney and Newcastle was not completed until 1930, and completion of the sealing of the Pacific Highway did not occur until 1958 (at Koorainghat, south of Taree). The last of the many ferries across the coastal rivers was not superseded by a bridge until 1966 (the Harwood Bridge across the south channel of the Clarence River the north channel had been bridged in 1931).

In 1928 the road from Sydney to Newcastle (still under construction) was proclaimed as part of the Great Northern Highway, and the road from Hexham to Tweed Heads as the North Coast Highway. In 1931 the full length from Sydney to Brisbane was proclaimed as the Pacific Highway.

Until the 1990s most road freight between Sydney and Brisbane passed along the New England Highway instead, due to the easier topography of the Northern Tablelands it traverses. Between 1950 and 1967, traffic on the Pacific Highway quadrupled due to the attraction of coastal towns between Sydney and Brisbane for retirement living and tourism . Shark Creek bridge near Maclean, formerly part of the Pacific Hwy

Two major coach accidents on the Pacific Highway in 1989 near Grafton (in which 20 people died) and at Clybucca near Kempsey (in which 35 people died) resulted in a public outcry over the poor quality of the road and its high fatality rate.[2] The Pacific Highway was never part of the Federally funded system of National Highways. This appears to be because when the Commonwealth funding of the 'national highway' system began in 1974, the longer New England Highway was chosen rather than the Pacific Highway as the SydneyBrisbane link due to its easier topography and consequent lower upgrade costs.

Yet the highway was undeniably heavily used by interstate traffic and its upgrade was beyond the resources of the New South Wales Government alone. The NSW Government and the Commonwealth Government argued for years about how the responsibility for funding the highway's upgrade should be divided between themselves, only coming up with a mutually acceptable upgrade package just after the 1996/97 financial year.
Current status

msg · Guru

Does anyone remember when the Bruce was one lane of tar and limited to 60mph? I think it was 60kmh might have been kph in 1969?

Sheba · Guru

Yep!!! We kids used to sit up on the roof and watch the Bikies go past on their way to Caloundra at the weekends. Used to take ages for them to go through. Now the Highway has by-passed my home-town.

Cheers,

Sheba.

Poppy sore eye · Senior Member

Hi garykelly, I have just had a look at your website, all I can say is WOW! How did you learn to create something like this. I am envious of a life when I have the time, the patience and the mindset to do something similar.

well done

EllenajoeL · Senior Member

msg wrote:
Does anyone remember when the Bruce was one lane of tar and limited to 60mph? I think it was 60kmh might have been kph in 1969?

Growing up in Brisbane in the 1960's, I remember the 'family holiday' driive, during school hols, to 'North'.....in an FE Holden too....

Anyway, if there was an accident/problem/gridlock etc...mum used to set up a picnic blanket on the side of the road (we are talking the Bruce Highway here) and serve up something sustaining for us kids and maybe others ....that's what the expected delays were like wink .

GaryKelly · Guru

Thanks Poppy. It started back in the late '90s when I wrote short stories and a bloke in the states suggested I start a website. He had to be kidding, right? Me? A webmaster? I'm about as technically inclined as Mr Bean. So he offered to create one for me and run it. Bad decision. He was never on time, buggered things up, didn't do what I asked, etc. He was followed by another couple of "helpers" who were just as bad, so I decided to learn webmastering myself. I started with a free program called Netscape Composer (a basic HTML editor) which I still use today - version 4.7, the last version without smart tags which I don't like. It's still available to download from the net. There are other more modern and fancier HTML editors for creating web pages but I'm kinda used to Composer so I'll stick with it. You can use MS Word but it's way too complex. For page layouts (columns, tables) I use freebies available on the net. Ditto background colors. I use Jalbum, a free program, to create photo albums. Photoscape, a free photo editing program. Google search to enable searches of my own web site. Plus a few tricks I've learned along the way. Ease of navigation is important, especially as a site grows, so you need a good head for organization of pages and links. You can also get ideas from visiting other web sites. But I keep mine pretty straight forward. I don't like gimmicks or razzamatazz.

It's not all that difficult really. I think it took me about 2 or 3 weeks of experimenting to get the gist of how to put a site together. I have a few friends on the net who helped with a bit of technical info and suggestions for improvements. Interestingly, when I came up with the idea for Aussie Odyssey a few years ago, I needed a logo. So I approached a neighbor who is a very good Aboriginal artist and asked her if she'd design a logo for me. She ummed and ahhhed so I gathered she wasn't interested. I came home, grabbed a sheet of paper and a few colored pencils and within an hour I had my logo. Hehe. If you want something done, do it yourself. I like doing my own webmastering. It gives me complete control over how it looks and what the content is. I'm it, webmaster, writer, photographer, videographer and editor, the lot.

So how did I learn? By necessity. Relying on other people didn't work out. They did me a favor really cos now I can do something I'd never thought I could. :)

Poppy sore eye · Senior Member

Thanks Gary, I look forward to meeting you out there somewhere.

Sheba · Guru

I also remember when that same stretch, [ the old road] was called "The Murder Highway."

Cheers,

Sheba.

-- Edited by Sheba on Thursday 9th of May 2013 08:20:17 PM

hako · Guru

msg wrote:
Does anyone remember when the Bruce was one lane of tar and limited to 60mph? I think it was 60kmh might have been kph in 1969?

I remember the Bruce highway when part of it (Sarina to Marlborough?) was called the crystal highway. There was also a strech around there that had no fuel for hundreds of miles.

It was good fun.....no airconditioning either.

hako · Guru

That's right Sheba, I remember that we had strict instructions not to stop on that stretch under any circumstances. Same deal with is you saw Gypsies - never stop....I wonder sometimes how much truth were in those stories especially the Gypsies. We were really pretty racist back then - my parents spoke poorly about Jews, Gypsies and the Black Irish (whoever they were?).

msg · Guru

Yep we drove up there in a Mk1 Cortina in 1969. Adelaid to Proserpine. Drove at night. Only one little service station that looked like the "Bates Hotel" Listened to radio and the discussin was all about Paul McCartney being dead and the messages on the record when it was played backwards. Great huge bugs hitting windscreen. Cane trains appearing out of nowhere. Quite eirey.

Sheba · Guru

hako wrote:
That's right Sheba,
I wonder sometimes how much truth were in those stories.

I know there were several Murders there, one lot was a couple in a Caravan, who'd over-nighted at the side of the Highway.
Cheers,
Sheba.