Silo Art, Wine Country and Small-Town Charm on Australia's Best Alternative Highway Route
The Hume Highway between Melbourne and Sydney is one of Australia’s busiest – and dullest – roads. So why not take the road less travelled and swap the main drag for scenic backroads peppered with silo art, heritage buildings and small-town nostalgia.
MELBOURNE – COROWA
441 kilometres
With my wife in the navigator’s seat, we borrow a Polaris 2 motorhome from Star RV’s Tullamarine depot and set off towards Shepparton on the Melbourne-Lancefield Road, via the Macedon Ranges towns of Romsey and Lancefield. Our first stop is in Colbinabbin beside silo art depicting pivotal moments in the town’s history, such as the arrival of the railways. It helps set the mood for a stopover at the Shepparton Art Museum that towers over Victoria Park Lake and is best known for its collection of Australian ceramics and a Sam Jinks sculpture called Woman and Child.
One town I never tire of visiting for its collection of centuries-old wineries is Rutherglen. All Saints, Buller, Stanton & Killeen and Campbells are all names familiar to connoisseurs of fortified wines and big, bold reds. But the promise of a private tour and tasting session inside Morris of Rutherglen’s new cellar door fortifies us for a three-course meal at hatted restaurant Grace, ahead of bunking down beside the Murray River in Corowa for the night.
Every motorist in Australia would be aware that the most direct route between Melbourne and Sydney is via the Hume Highway. But we also know how boring it is. Where it once snaked through the centres of Wangaratta, Goulburn and Gundagai, the highway doesn’t meander through a single town today, posing the question: is there a better alternative?
There’s the Princes Highway, of course, which is a lovely drive, especially on the New South Wales side of the border where the highway hugs the coast in idyllic holiday spots like Kiama and Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay. Less so in Victoria, though, where the only ocean vistas you’ll see will be in your rearview mirror.
So I did some research and discovered a route that runs parallel to the Hume without adding much by way of mileage. I could avoid the Hume altogether, driving along roads I’ve never travelled before. And rather than shooting up to Sydney in a day I could give myself time to see the sights along the way.
COROWA – YOUNG
309 kilometres
The Olympic Highway shadows the Hume from Albury to Cowra, where it joins the Mid-Western Highway to Sydney. It adds less than 100 kilometres to the journey and passes through every town along the way. Both make compelling arguments for choosing it over the Hume.
From Corowa, it’s an hour’s drive until we merge with the Olympic Highway at Henty then continue north to Wagga Wagga. Between the two towns is a rocky outcrop that’s simply known as The Rock, set above a tiny town of the same name. Resembling a miniaturised version of the Grampians, it’s a popular hiking spot with numerous viewpoints overlooking the Riverina plains.
Wagga Wagga sprawls along the southern banks of the Murrumbidgee River and it’s here, beside the sandy Wagga Beach, where we pause for a lunch before continuing along the highway to Junee. The Junee Roundhouse Museum (on the site of the old railway depot) is a fascinating engineering feat, while the circa-1885 Monte Cristo Homestead on a hill nearby is said to be Australia’s most haunted house. But it’s the promise of tasty sweets that lures us to the Junee Licorice & Chocolate factory, housed inside a rustic old flour mill.
We’ve been impressed by the tidiness of each town we’ve passed through, and how the wide shopping strips branch off the highway instead of stretching along it. But there’s more to these places than civic pride. Cootamundra attracts doting cricket fans paying their respects to Donald Bradman in the place of his birth. And the cherry harvest season late each year coincides with a bustling festival in Young, where the Young Tourist Caravan Park is within walking distance of the town centre.
YOUNG – SYDNEY
434 kilometres
We arrive early in Cowra, anticipating a full day’s drive. A lookout point on Bellevue Hill, down the road from the Cowra Japanese Garden, offers sweeping views over town. Murals on water tanks nearby illustrate Wiradjuri youth and the town’s WWII prison camp history.
Grainfields flank the highway on the approach to Bathurst, where a motor race around Mount Panorama foils our plan of setting record lap times in the motorhome. With the hours ticking by, we hurtle past a statue of ‘Lithgow Flash’ (legendary sprinter Marjorie Jackson), vowing to save the splendours of the Blue Mountains for another time.
Sydney’s snarling traffic is unavoidable so it’s hours before we pull into our suburban sanctuary at Discovery Parks Lane Cove. A sunset bevy in the park overlooking Lane Cove National Park proves the perfect ending to our drive.
JOURNEY PLANNER
This Melbourne to Sydney scenic route is 990 kilometres (excluding sightseeing detours), compared to 880 kilometres if travelling directly up the Hume.
If you want to tackle the drive one way, Star RV has two, four and six-berth motorhomes available for hire from 11 branches across Australia and New Zealand.
The writer travelled with the assistance of Star RV, G’Day Group and Victoria’s High Country.
