Say what you will about Australia’s major highway system – or don’t, because, you know, stuff talking about roads – but those civil engineers and nation builders who put it all together have, by and large, given us quick and convenient thoroughfares along the mighty passages of our great southern land.
One of the very best is the Pacific Motorway – the mighty M1 – which soars north out of Sydney Town like an eight-lane runway to paradise. Or in this case Newcastle, where it ends up after 127 kilometres of bitumen beauty. Maybe not beauty; it’s a road, not Jessica Alba. But it is a beaut, the M1.
Mainly because it can take you to golf in the famous Hunter Valley; 23,000 square kilometres of beaches, vineyards and rugby league. It is league land, the Hunter, home of the Newcastle Knights NRL team and the famous sons of Cessnock, Matthew and Andrew Johns. Ask locals if they support the Newcastle Knights and they’ll look at you as a Nepalese monk might if you’d queried his work on the gong.
The Hunter is big and it’s rural, with many jobs in mines which sit hand in glove with the Hunter’s 150-plus vineyards, and its famous names like Tyrell, Tulloch, Brokenwood, Bimbadgen. Some wineries are so big, they’ve
