Driving Out Of Town in Australia

Any of you who live in the UK will know that if you decide to drive out of town, it is usually not long before you are driving into another town.

Where I used to live, for example, if I drove out of town in any one of four different directions, within 10 minutes I would be in either Brentwood, Chelmsford, Basildon or Wickford. Driving out of town or even a major city here in Australia is very different. It’s really not long before you are staring at open expanses of countryside.

Let’s drive out of some of those major cities now and see what we can find. Let’s start with where I live.

Driving out of Brisbane

Heading south will take you to the Gold Coast, the opposite direction will take you to the Sunshine Coast. You will pass countryside on the way to both. Travelling east will see you eventually hit the water, so we’re going to go west.

Brisbane West 1 Brisbane West 2

Brisbane WestDriving out of Sydney

Drive west from Sydney and after about 74.6 km, you’ll find yourself at the Blue Mountains.

Blue mountains 1 Blue mountains 2 Blue mountains 3 Blue mountains 4 Blue mountains 5

Blue MountainsDriving out of Melbourne

I’m going to cheat a little bit here, I’ve been to Melbourne a couple of times, but I never actually drove out of the city into the countryside. But when I went on my Australian road trip, I remember driving towards the city from Sydney and the road look like this forever.

Into Melbourne 1 Into Melbourne 2

Into MelbourneAnd then driving home from Warrnambool, picking up roads just north of Melbourne going through Ballarat, Bendigo and heading towards Shepparton, the road look like this for a very long time.

Melbourne north 1 Melbourne north 2 Melbourne north 3 Melbourne north 4 Melbourne north 5 Melbourne north 6 Melbourne north 7 Melbourne north 8

Melbourne northThat’s enough driving for now, time for a coffee break. As they say, Stop Revive Survive. We can go for another drive next week. We have a lot more countryside to discover.

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{ 4 comments… add one }
  • djmcbell January 12, 2016, 2:14 am |

    There’s no cars in any of those pictures!

    Strange… I look at those roads and I’m thinking “yeah, I could have a nice leisurely drive down there”. And I *HATE* driving. Probably because the roads here are full of idiots who can’t figure out roundabouts and have forgotten they have these things called “indicators”.

    • BobinOz January 12, 2016, 8:26 pm |

      That’s not strictly true, my car is there in some of those pictures, just 🙂

      I can assure you though, we do have traffic jams on certain roads, but they’re not in my view real traffic jams, not like we get in the UK.

      Here, bad traffic is where, for example, a two hour journey takes three hours. That would be very bad. In the UK I’ve done journeys that should take 40 minutes (Enfield via M25 to the A127) that have taken three hours. I’ve watched the sunset on the M25 many times.

      • djmcbell January 12, 2016, 9:52 pm |

        Whenever I’ve driven in Australia (around the Bellarine, in the Gold Coast) and New Zealand (Auckland, Rotorua and a few other places) I’ve found it amazingly easy compared to the UK. Honestly no idea why as a lot of those places were quite built up, but it just was.

        • BobinOz January 13, 2016, 9:17 pm |

          I agree. I think one of the reasons, in most areas anyway, is that the roads are so much wider and usually have much less traffic. Sorry, that’s two reasons.

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