This week, Roy has decided it is time to show all his friends his favourite way to drive home to Sydney from the Hunter Valley. Roy is particularly fond of the Hunter Valley, and enjoys day trips to the area a couple of times a year. Although to reach the Hunter we follow the more modern F3, when time permits Roy loves to drive through Wollembi on the way home, following the old Great North Road.
There are plenty of areas where you can follow the route of the Great North Road by car, and others which you can walk, yet the section we follow from Wollembi is one of Roys favourites. Walking the road is wonderful, and allows you to see just what the road was like before it was covered with modern road surface, but it is something which takes time, and is difficult to do ‘on a whim’. Roy will show you some of the walking sections later though. Other sections of the road which we regularly drive closer to Sydney have been upgraded so often that it is difficult to spot the remnants of the original road. The road around Wollembi is different though. Not only can you drive it, you can still see the convict culverts, drains and abutments and there are even places to pull off the road to examine some of them more closely.
The Great North Road, sometimes known as the Convict Road or the Convict Trail was built in the late 1820s and early 1830s. At the time the convict settlement in Newcastle had been moved to Port Macquarie and so the farming land was now available for settlers. Yet there was no road from Sydney to Newcastle and the route by sea could be dangerous. The land between Sydney and Newcastle was inhospitable, with high cliffs and deep gorges and though there were some hardy settlers who swam their cattle across the Hawkesbury River and then guided them up the creeks, many had been washed away in floods. A safe road was desperately needed and this road, when it was completed, was the Great North Road.
Althoughy the road was built relatively quickly, there were many routes which the road could take and which were suggested. Some were built and then quickly abandoned, others are still in use today. The plan was supported by both the Government and the Surveyor General, Sir Thomas Mitchell (though Mitchell was also criticised for trying to make the road a monument to himself). They had a grand vision for a road as good as any you might see in England and Roy thinks they, and the thousands of convicts who worked on the road did pretty well. Yet other, quicker and more hospitable routes with greater supplies of water and food for animals soon sprang up and steam travel also took travellers away from the Great North Road. It soon fell into decline. If you would like to learn more about the Great North Road, click here.
