Pacific Highway (Australia) - Route Description

Route Description

From Sydney the Pacific Highway starts as the continuation of the Bradfield Highway at the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, immediately north of the Sydney Central Business District and is the main route as far as the suburb of Wahroonga. From the Harbour Bridge to the Gore Hill Freeway at Artarmon it has no route number and from the Gore Hill Freeway to Wahroonga it is designated as Metroad 1. From Wahroonga to Hexham near Newcastle the Pacific Highway has been superseded by the Sydney–Newcastle Freeway, known formerly and still colloquially as the "F3". The present designation of this road is National Highway 1. The freeway ends at John Renshaw Drive at Beresfield, from which a connector road leads to the New England Highway (national highway 15) between Hexham and Maitland. Northbound traffic turns right onto a short section John Renshaw Drive then connect via an overpass to the New England Highway towards Newcastle, to rejoin the Pacific Highway at Hexham interchange.

Back at Wahroonga, the Pacific Highway itself is located mostly parallel to the freeway until Kariong (at which point it diverts into the Central Coast through Gosford and Wyong). It continues along this route (designated "state route 83") until Doyalson. The section of the highway from Cowan to Kariong follows a scenic winding route. This section was damaged quite severely during severe weather in June 2007. Five people died when a bridge over Piles Creek collapsed and the entire section was closed due to subsidence two kilometres further south. The road was reopened in 2009 when the Holt-Bragg Bridge was opened, named after the family that had perished. The section of what was formerly the Pacific Highway from the Wiseman's Ferry Road junction at Somersby, through to the Pacific Hwy exit at Gosford (adjacent to Brian McGowan Bridge), has been rebadged as the Central Coast Highway, still carrying "state route 83".

Between 1925 and 1930 the then-Main Roads Board reconstructed a route between Hornsby and Calga that had been abandoned some forty years earlier, in order to provide a direct road link between Sydney and Newcastle. In addition a replacement route, from Calga into the gorge of Mooney Mooney Creek and up to the ridge at Kariong above Gosford, was also required. This new Sydney–Newcastle route via Calga and Gosford was some 80 km shorter than the previous route via Parramatta, McGraths Hill, Maroota, Wisemans Ferry, Wollombi and Cessnock. At first Peats Ferry was reinstituted to cross the Hawkesbury River, with construction of the bridge not beginning until 1938, due to the Great Depression. Due to the onset of World War II, the Peats Ferry Bridge was not completed until May 1945.

The highway recommences as "state route 83" in Gosford and continues north through the Central Coast suburbs of Ourimbah and Wyong as a regional route before meeting with a spur of the Sydney–Newcastle Freeway near Doyalson numbered as "state route 111". At this point the Pacific Highway becomes "state route 111", and is a four-lane regional highway passing Lake Macquarie and on through the suburbs of the cities of Lake Macquarie and Newcastle before rejoining national route 1 at Hexham.

From Bennetts Green to Sandgate it is supplemented by the Newcastle Inner City Bypass, through New Lambton and Jesmond. Two lengths of this route (Bennetts Green-Kotara Heights and Jesmond-Shortland) have been replaced by freeway.

From Hexham, the Pacific Highway (now national route 1 again) passes along the NSW North Coast and across the state border into Queensland at Tweed Heads, on the southern fringe of the Gold Coast, Queensland. From here, the Highway is a divided four-lane urban arterial to Billinga, where it becomes the Pacific Motorway. The former route of the Pacific Highway through Burleigh Heads, Surfers Paradise and Southport was renamed the Gold Coast Highway.