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Photo Gallery
New South Wales Road Photo Gallery:
National Route 48: Illawarra Highway
Illawarra Highway connects Wollongong to the New South Wales Southern Highlands. It links Princes Highway and Hume Highway and signed as National Route 48.
It is named after the geographical area it crosses, the Illawarra region and Illawarra Escarpment. Typical scenery is bushland and farmland, dotted with towns. The route incorporates the spectacular Macquarie Pass (opened in 1898), the pass has one of the southernmost stands of Australia's sub tropical rainforest. The route's name was intronduced in the early 1960s and was given the NR48 sheild in 1974.
The main towns along the route include Albion Park, Robertson and Moss Vale. Eastern terminus is the roundabout at the junction with the Princes Highway, outside the airport at Albion Park Rail and the western terminus is Hoddle's Crossroads: the interchange built in 1987 with the Hume Highway and Canyonleigh Road at Sutton Forest.
History:
The Illawarra Highway was originally part of the main South Coast Road from Wollongong to Jamberoo. It branches off the Princes Highway near Albion Park and links the Illawarra to the Southern Highlands via the Macquarie Pass. The latter was originally an Aboriginal track, cleared in 1863 but not properly constructed until 1898. As well as providing a commercially useful link between these areas, the scenic beauty of the route, particularly along the Macquarie Pass, attracted tourists, a growing industry in the late nineteenth century; and trips from Albion Park to Macquarie Falls were a popular local attraction. From the late 1870s coal seams were discovered in the Escarpment at Tongarra in what is now the Macquarie Pass National Park and mining began in 1893.
Click within a box below to view that section of the highway:
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