Hartley Highway

The Great Western Highway starts out from Sydney promisingly enough via the Western Distributor and the West Connex onto the M4. The latter eventually finishes up at Penrith and dwindles to an acceptable four lane A road which proceeds up the Blue Mountains to Katoomba, where most Sydneysiders seem to believe that the earth ends in eternal white mist. Foolish travellers, who wish to continue, then fall off the edge of the planet (presumably)

Fortunately the earth does continue but the road narrows to basically a two lane track (still called the "Great Western Highway", mind you) onwards ever onwards to such "fabled" locations as Blackheath, Lithgow, Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo etc etc.

Now, planning for an 11 km four lane motorway tunnel beneath Blackheath (our house actually) and Mt Victoria to the bottom of the Victoria Pass is well advanced but Federal funds are held up (so that the PM can point to "responsible surpluses" ... sigh). Nonetheless, work on the highway (once it was to have emerged from the tunnel) is approaching completion. The swathe of the divided four lane bypass at Hartley can be seen in my blip, shot from the Cox's Road overpass pictured to the left.