The Lake Highway, or A5, is a main highway and A-road in Tasmania. Although still known as the Lake Highway the official title of the road was changed in 2001 to Highland Lakes Road.
The Lake Highway branches off the Midland Highway at Melton Mowbray in southern Tasmania and continues for 146 kilometres, with Bothwell being the main town of any size on route, it terminates in Deloraine. It is the only major A-road in Australia that is partially unsealed. The highway is one of the least used in Tasmania, except during the summer months when the road is used by Great Lake commuters. The portion of the highway on and near the Great Lake in Tasmania's Central plateau, averages a height of about 1000 metres. During the winter months it is sometimes snowed under.
Two major roads that branch from the Lake Highway are the Marlborough Highway (which connects to the A10 Lyell Highway), and Poatina Rd., (B51), which leaves the Lake Highway north of the Steppes and plunges steeply over the Great Western Tiers to the former hydro-electric construction village of Poatina.
Famous quotes containing the words lake and/or highway:
“This is my lake country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)