Pacific Highway (Australia) - History

History

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 The last of the many ferries across the coastal rivers was not superseded by a bridge until 1966 (the Harwood Bridge across the south channel of the Clarence River – the north channel had been bridged in 1931).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.

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. 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 Sydney–Brisbane 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. The Highway is now part of the AusLink National Network and new projects are funded 50/50 by the Federal and State governments.