Great & Crap Driving Roads
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NTA'S Favourite Alternate Aussie Roads Part 1:
Let's start small: Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra is boring as batshit. Unfortunately avoiding large parts of it cuts your speed dramatically. So these days I usually suck it up until I get to Goulburn, then turn off and head down the country road via Tarago. Less cops, less dickheads, and you can make up the lost 15 minutes or so that Google Maps talks about without too much issue.
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NTA'S Favourite Alternate Aussie Roads Part 2:
The Newell Highway is the bowstring between Melbourne and Brisbane, but the stretch north of Dubbo to Coonabarabran is hilly, a bit bendy occasionally, and loaded with big trucks and grey nomads.
So fuck all of that - take the alternate road via Mendooran. Funnily enough, Google Maps says to do this now as well, being both 20km and 14 minutes shorter. It never used to do that as it thought the road was second-rate and would figure average speed below 80km/h. But clearly I and other drivers have provided data to re-educate.
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NTA'S Favourite Alternate Aussie Roads Part 3:
I've driven the New England Highway its entire length several times, between Hexham (Newcastle) NSW, and the northern tip in the middle of fucking nowhere aka Yarraman, QLD. Parents moved to Wondai QLD (stop laughing - these are all real names) when I was at Uni and I moved to Sydney. Perfect distance.
This year for a trip to see the old girl, I decided I was bored of that route, and would not even contemplate the coast road, so I headed up the other inland road and it was a fucking beaut from Gloucester through to Walcha which is otherwise known as Thunderbolts Way after a bushranger.
Thoroughly recommended - into the high interior where it occasionally snows, and through some spectacular forest up around the Barrington Tops. Pioneer lookout is a highlight, showing just how fucking crazy early settlers were.
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@Crucial said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
I think this thread needs to define a great driving road.
Some seem to think it’s the one where the kids can watch a movie undisturbed, some the scenery on the way and others whether you get to test the capabilities of the car and driver.Judging by the tone of some on here, it is "any road that I have all to myself and nobody else is allowed on it waaaaah!"
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NTA'S Favourite Alternate Aussie Roads Part 4:
Someone mentioned the Hay plain earlier being boring - well it can be. I don't get out there very often and I appreciate the stillness and relatively stark landscape. Being able to see the curvature of the earth from your car is cool.
I found this alternate quite by accident while heading to Hay to go camping with a mate from Adelaide. It was windy as fuck on the open dual carriageway, I was bored of the Hume Highway and had driven the Sydney-Wagga leg (turning off onto the Sturt Hwy) so often I was grinding my teeth in anticipation.
Deciding I needed to get out of the wind, I turned off near Binalong and had the best time going up and down the hills away from all the other traffic, and Google Maps took me on some road I'd never driven before, through places I definitely had.
The last section between Darlington Point and Hay is a road unto itself: one and a half to two lanes of tar for 100km and no lines marked. Flat country, bugger all traffic forever and a chance to put the foot down and carve some serious time off the journey. That was fucking fun.
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@NTA said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
NTA'S Favourite Alternate Aussie Roads Part 4:
Someone mentioned the Hay plain earlier being boring - well it can be. I don't get out there very often and I appreciate the stillness and relatively stark landscape. Being able to see the curvature of the earth from your car is cool.
I found this alternate quite by accident while heading to Hay to go camping with a mate from Adelaide. It was windy as fuck on the open dual carriageway, I was bored of the Hume Highway and had driven the Sydney-Wagga leg (turning off onto the Sturt Hwy) so often I was grinding my teeth in anticipation.
Deciding I needed to get out of the wind, I turned off near Binalong and had the best time going up and down the hills away from all the other traffic, and Google Maps took me on some road I'd never driven before, through places I definitely had.
The last section between Darlington Point and Hay is a road unto itself: one and a half to two lanes of tar for 100km and no lines marked. Flat country, bugger all traffic forever and a chance to put the foot down and carve some serious time off the journey. That was fucking fun.
That was me, kind of.
It was so featureless it was awesome.
Drive for miles and see nothing, just flat land. Then awaay in the distance there's a dot, and you wonder what the hell that is. You get closer and you think it's a fencepost, a person, no a cow, no ... Oh it's a windmill.
And then nothing again, until you see another dot in the distance.
It was cool.
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@booboo said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
Drive for miles and see nothing, just flat land. Then awaay in the distance there's a dot, and you wonder what the hell that is. You get closer and you think it's a fencepost, a person, no a cow, no ... Oh it's a windmill.
Or a very small tree. Occasionally, out of nowhere, a fucking river or something. It is wonderfully bizarre.
This is on the way back from my trip, Mid Western Highway, about ten minutes out of Hay. Even in panoramic mode it is still flat as...
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Flat? Clearly an undulation in the road.
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@antipodean They do have floodways every so often
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@NTA Coast to Tarago via Nerrigan Pub is a good ride.
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@antipodean said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
@NTA Coast to Tarago via Nerrigan Pub is a good ride.
Will put that on the list.
I did Jindabyne to Merimbula via Dalgety and Cathcart a couple of years ago. Very nice drive.
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What I learned
During covid, and using their super money, approximately everyone in Australia bought either a boat, a camper trailer, or a caravan. And nor everyone has worked out how best to tow it yet.
I saw some poor fluffybunny who had flipped a relatively new looking land rover, with a nice looking boat still attached to the back.
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@mariner4life said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
During covid, and using their super money, approximately everyone in Australia bought either a boat, a camper trailer, or a caravan. And nor everyone has worked out how best to tow it yet.
I'll bet they can't fucking park them either. After my oldies went grey nomad, dad would have a list of stories about how many oversized luxury vans bought by septuagenarian couples with no idea how to reverse them into spaces designed to fit an ancient single axle.
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@NTA said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
@mariner4life said in Great & Crap Driving Roads:
During covid, and using their super money, approximately everyone in Australia bought either a boat, a camper trailer, or a caravan. And nor everyone has worked out how best to tow it yet.
I'll bet they can't fucking park them either. After my oldies went grey nomad, dad would have a list of stories about how many oversized luxury vans bought by septuagenarian couples with no idea how to reverse them into spaces designed to fit an ancient single axle.
Somebody got a thesaurus from Santa!
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Greatest car drives - San Francisco to San Diego in the '90's. Great music, leisurely driving and stunning scenery
Cheltenham to Banbury via Winchcombe, Stow-on-the-Wold & Chipping Norton one snowy 23 December in 2001 or 2002. Great driving roads, beautiful villages and towns that you only get in England, and a magical landscape.
Bikes. Rimutakas and the Wellington-Makara road. Racer Road No.1 & No. 2. Liskeard to Bolventor accross Bodmin Moor is pretty special too.
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25 years ago this was a cracking route. Bells Line of Road, Putty Road out to Singleton and then loop back to Lithgow via Bylong.
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@antipodean pretty sure it was the Putty I rode south from Singleton with the Mrs on the back a couple of years ago. My favourite ride of the three week trip. Not a lot of traffic and was able to get into the groove.
Bells later in the same day was a bit disappointing. Too much traffic and silly speed limits from memory. I am not a hoon by any stretch, but some speed limits in Aus are so low they risk causing problems through boredom.
