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| end_b = | est = 1817 | through = , Wodonga, Wangaratta, Benalla, Seymour, Craigieburn | route = | former = see Former route allocations | exits = | location =Location Hume Hwy.svg }} The Hume Highway, inclusive of the sections now known as the Hume Freeway and Hume Motorway, is one of Australia's major inter-city highways, running for between Melbourne and Sydney. Upgrading of the entire route to dual carriageway was completed on 7 August 2013.〔https://au.prime7.yahoo.com/v1/news/a/-/local/18411793/four-lanes-at-last-as-bypass-opens-video/〕 The road is called the Hume Freeway in Victoria, the Hume Motorway between and , New South Wales, and the Hume Highway elsewhere in New South Wales. It is part of the Auslink National Network and is a vital link for road freight to transport goods to and from the two cities as well as serving Albury-Wodonga and Canberra. The main alternative route between Sydney and Melbourne is the Princes Highway/Princes Freeway/Princes Motorway route (A1/M1) which follows the coast for most of its length. Other inland alternate routes include the Olympic Highway route (A41) between Albury and Sydney via Cowra and Bathurst, and also the Federal Highway / Monaro Highway route (M23/A23/B23) via Canberra which links with the Hume Highway near Goulburn and the Princes Highway in East Gippsland. In NSW during 2013, the National Highway shield, National Highway 31, was replaced with a standard alphanumeric route number, the M31 south of Prestons (along with the A22 east of Liverpool into the Sydney CBD and the A28 for a short length through Liverpool). This re-numbering for the first time in over 20 years created one continuously signed route along the Hume Highway, having already been signed the M31 in Victoria during the 1990s. During 2013 the route between Berrima and Prestons was also renamed the Hume Motorway. ==History== The coast of New South Wales from the Queensland border to the Victorian border is separated from the inland by an escarpment, forming the eastern edge of the Great Dividing Range. There are few easy routes up this escarpment. To climb from the coast to the tablelands the Hume Highway uses the Bargo Ramp, a geological feature which provides one of the few easy crossings of the escarpment. In the first twenty years of European settlement at Sydney (established 1788), exploration southwest of Sydney was slow. This area was heavily wooded at the time, especially the "Bargo brush", which was regarded as almost impenetrable. In 1798 explorers (Wilson, Price, Hacking, and Collins) reached the Moss Vale and Marulan districts, but this was not followed up. Any settlement would have to await the construction of an adequate access track, which would have been beyond the colony's resources at the time, and would have served little purpose as a source of supplies for Sydney, due to the time taken to reach Sydney. In 1804, Charles Throsby penetrated through the Bargo brush to the country on the tablelands near Moss Vale and Sutton Forest. On another expedition in 1818, he reached Lake Bathurst and the "Goulburn Plains". Many of the early explorers would most likely have used aboriginal guides, but they do not appear to have given them credit. After Charles Throsby's 1818 journey towards present day Goulburn, followed by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell's overland journey from Appin (near Campbelltown) to Port Phillip and return in 1824, development of the Southern Tablelands for agriculture was rapid. The present route of the Hume Highway is much the same as that used by the pioneers. The route taken by the Hume Highway to climb from the coast to the Southern Tablelands and thence across the Great Divide is situated between the parallel river gorge systems of the Wollondilly and Shoalhaven Rivers. This country consists generally of a gently sloping plateau which is deeply dissected by the Nepean River and its tributaries. The route of the Highway, by using four high-level bridges to cross these gorges, avoids the Razorback Range, and has minimal earthworks. The climb from the western side of the Nepean River at Menangle up to Mittagong is fairly sustained, a fact that is hard to appreciate at high speed on the modern freeway. The highway climbs non-stop over a distance of 16 km from the Pheasant's Nest bridge over the Nepean River to Yerrinbool, before dropping slightly before the final climb to reach the tablelands at Aylmerton. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hume Highway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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