Great Southern Road -
Towrang.
The Main Roads Management Act of June 1858 declared the Great
Southern Road, from near Sydney through Goulburn and Gundagai to
Albury, as one of the three main roads in the colony. Today we know
it as the Hume Highway, named after Hamilton Hume the travelling
partner of William Hovell on their overland journey from Appin
(near Campbelltown) to Port Phillip and return in 1824.
Over the years the road has seen many realignments, some minor
and some major with entire towns being bypassed. So I thought that
I would do a series of caches based on the old sections of the
Great Sothern Road. This is the first one.
The town of Towrang was established in the 1800s as a major
stockade for chain-bound convicts and others involved in the
construction of the Great South Road was located on the north side
of the Hume Highway at Towrang Creek. The area was once a large
producer of fruit for the Sydney market, something that is hard to
believe given the current rainfall statistics. The railway station
opened in 1869 and was one of the busiest in the state, once again
hard to believe.
There are two options to access the cache. Either park on the
highway (please pull off the road as far as possible) or the better
option of parking at the nearby "Derrick VC" rest area and walk
down the Great Southern Road to the cache. At the cache you will
see the Towrang Culvert which was built by convict labour in 1839.
It is one of seven culverts that still exist in the area. You can
find
more information on them here.
If you park at the rest area and look carefully you can see
evidence of three different alignments of the highway. It is
interesting to see how it has changed over the years.
Disclaimer: Information contained above has been drawn from many
different sources, fell free to correct me if any of it is
wrong.
*FTF* goes to jkcourtz.