Pacific Highway
This article is an itinerary.
The Pacific Highway is a highway running between the Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane, up the North Coast of New South Wales.
Culture and History
The Pacific Highway is the major road link between Sydney and Brisbane. Additionally, it passes through a populous area of New South Wales, connecting you with many of the state's major cities and towns. The Pacific Highway is 800km long. It is possible to drive up the highway in a single day, but this is a six segment itinerary with several shorter drives and a number of stops in New South Wales cities.
Prepare
When planning a trip up the Pacific Highway, the major consideration is holidays. The Pacific Highway links several large Australian cities and also passes through major beach holiday areas close to Sydney. Thus traffic is absolutely nightmarish at either end of a holiday period; it's not unheard of for trip times to be four times as long. The worst times to be travelling north are the afternoon and evening of Christmas Eve (or of the day before if Christmas Eve is a Sunday), the afternoon and evening of the day before the Good Friday holiday; and the night before and morning of the first day of any long weekend. When travelling south, the end of holiday periods are the peak time. Since Australians take summer holidays in January, you will also want to avoid travelling north on the Friday or Saturday of any weekend in January, and likewise avoid travelling south on Sundays in January.
As the Pacific Highway is a major road passing through a populated area, there's no need to take special precautions as you might when driving through a remote area. It might be a good idea, as with all car trips, to make sure that you have food, water and warm enough clothing so that having to sleep in the car for a night wouldn't be a disaster. However, you wil have ample opportunity to purchase all food and drink along the way.
See also: Tips for road trips and Driving in Australia.
Travel to Pacific Highway & Visa Requirements
Drive
Sydney to Nelson's Bay
Nelson's Bay to Port Macquarie
Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour
Coffs Harbour to Ballina
Ballina to the Gold Coast
Gold Coast to Brisbane
Stay safe
The Pacific Highway is one of Australia's most dangerous roads for accidents and fatalities: 245 people were killed on the highway between 1990 and 1995. Despite being a major Australian road connecting two of its largest cities, for much of its length it is a single carriageway with two lanes: that is, there is nothing except a painted line marker separating you from oncoming traffic. The 100km/h speed limit combined with relatively twisty parts of the road where visibility is poor are a nasty combination, especially on the North Coast section of the road. You should exercise a great deal of caution, and not let the popularity of the route or its prominent status lull you into mistaking it for a very safe route.!!
Get out
This page was last edited at 02:10, on 12 June 2007 by Evan Prodromou. Based on work by Stacy Hall and Mark Jaroski, Wikitravel user(s) Pashley, Jonboy and Hypatia and Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel.
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