The Gippsland Track has grown and matured, shifting and changing to meet changing needs.
National Route 1 was identified and listed officially in 1955. In 2004 VicRoads listed the Princes Highway East as Arterial Road 6510. It has several names even now in Gippsland. As National Route 1 it had signboards showing it running almost right around Australia. I don't think there are any of those left. Parts of it are still the Princes Highway and parts are now called the Princes Freeway. When Victoria gave the roads numbers instead of names the Princes Highway East became A1. Now much of it is called the M1.
The Country Roads Board Act 1912 formed the CRB and it had to identify 'main' roads, and take responsibility for them from the various local councils. In 1913 it referred to "the Gippsland Road" in declaring the first part of it a Main Road. That first section was between Longwarry and Warragul, on 10 November 1913, and by 7 September 1914 the whole route was declared, though for some reason this was done in eight stages,
In 1920 we were planning the visit of the Prince of Wales, who was to become Edward VIII and then abdicate. One thought was that he could travel overland between Melbourne and Sydney, but there was neither time nor funding to make the roads smooth enough for royal travel. Nonetheless, the link around the coast was named the Princes Highway in honour of the Prince.
He never actually travelled the road, but he did consent to having it named after him. Some unkind people suggested in the press that the Prince a little too 'precious' to be willing to endure the discomfort.
The official opening of the Princes Highway between Melbourne and, I think, the NSW border, took place in Warragul on 10 August 1920. There is a monument there, at the north east corner of the old Princes Highway where Lardner's Track comes up from the south and crosses the railway.
The memorial, a small copy of Cleopatra's Needle, is to the memory of William Calder, head of the Country Roads Board.
It is made from Tynong granite and is 20 feet tall.
The "Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle" reported the unveiling of the memorial on 1 May 1921. G.M. Davis, Member of the Legislative Council, did the honours but the majority of the official guests were the "Delegates to the Gippsland Shires and Boroughs Development Association."
Calder died in 1928, and while there are quite a few uses of his name on other memorials of various types, it is entirely right that the Warragul memorial is placed where it is. For some reason the road from Longwarry to Warragul was the first part of the Princes Highway to be declared a Main Road and thus entitled to government funding.
This was Calder's doing, and he pushed hard for road development in Gippsland. He also got out of his office actually travelled the road, taking notes and photographs.
Th CRB was created at least partly because of the efforts of the Gippsland Shires and Boroughs Development Association", which met in Warragul.
This site chosen for the memorial was also the site of the naming ceremony for the Princes Highway in, I think, 1922.
The Princes Highway has seen so many changes I cannot possibly know all of them, but this does show that roads are not as fixed as we sometimes believe.
They change as our needs change.
The Princes Highway coming east from the Big Smoke to Dandenong is pretty much all now called Dandenong Road, as the South East Freeway (now the Monash Freeway) became a faster route and largely took away the ex-Gippsland traffic.
From the junction with the South Gippsland Freeway the relatively new Princes Freeway bypasses Hallam, Narre Warren Berwick Beaconsfield Officer and Pakenham and rejoins the old Princes Highway route at Nar Nar Goon. The sections highway thus bypassed are now route C101 and is generally known as the Old Princes Highway.
That name makes it easy to follow the history but where it runs through the now-bypassed Drouin and Warragul it is officially Princes Way (route C102). In Moe and Newborough it seems now to be Lloyd Street and Narracan Drive. This is now 'route C103 so it is no surprise that route C104 is Princes Drive through Morwell.
The highway followed the 'old road' through the Haunted Hills, now called Haunted Hills Road, cuts across the open cut extension to Morwell Bridge (until the route was dug up) and then ran down the Old Melbourne Road into Morwell. That road is also known as the Morwell Bridge Road, unless I am more confused than I think I am.
In 1959, following the southward extension of the Yallourn open cut, which cut out a large section of the old highway that long-defunct but historically vital to Gippsland body, the Country Roads Board, started a long series of by-passes and higher quality roads generally in that part of the world.
The new road opened in 1960 as an expressway from Hernes Oak and the Morwell River (well south of the old Morwell Bridge. In 1964 this was extended westward to Newborough at Gunn's Gully. (I still remember childhood stops there to look at the birds and animals at the service station there, and they are good memories.) Toward the end of 1964 the by-pass link from Newborough to Moe was completed.
I once had an elderly neighbour, a lovely bloke who'd married in the late 1940s and honeymooned in Pambula. In about 1975 we were talking about it and he said "I suppose that road would be pretty-well all sealed now."
I assured him that it was, and I thought it was a strange thing to say, but I was surprised later to find out that the sealing was not completed until the Genoa section was sealed in 1966.
From Lakes Entrance east to the border the Princes Highway is a remarkably good road through some lonely country and magnificent forests.
Another track that has historical significance is the Old Telegraph Road, which has links with the Gippsland Track. That track heads southeast from Jackson's Track to Jindivick and comes down to join the Drouin-Neerim Road just north of the Tarago River, just west of Glen Cromie. Another time.
