page_title: New England Highway
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: New England Highway / History
caption_attribution_description: Thunderbolts Rocks, originally known as Split Rock this huge cluster of granite rocks was used by the bushranger, Fred Ward (Captain Thunderbolt) as a vantage point for detecting and robbing approaching mail coaches in the 1860's.
context_page_description: The New England Highway is an 878-kilometre long highway in Australia running from Hexham at Newcastle, New South Wales at its southern end to Yarraman, north of Toowoomba, Queensland at its northern end. It is part of Australia's National Highway system, and forms part of the inland route between Brisbane and Sydney.
context_section_description: The New England Highway has its origins in the track which developed north from Newcastle to reach the prime wool growing areas of the New England region which Europeans settled following expeditions by NSW Surveyor-General John Oxley in 1818 and botanist Allan Cunningham in 1827 and 1829. The rough track, navigable only by horse or bullock dray, crossed the Liverpool Range, went through Tamworth and ended at Tenterfield. The track became known as the Great Northern Road. During the 1860s, several robberies occurred along the road, with infamous bushranger Captain Thunderbolt known to be active in the area.
  When the NSW main road system was reorganised in August 1928, the Great Northern Road was gazetted as part of state highway 9 and renamed the Great Northern Highway. At proclamation, the Great Northern Highway was described as stretching from North Sydney to the Queensland border at Mount Lindesay, via Newcastle, Maitland, Tamworth, Armidale, Tenterfield and Woodenbong. The route became known as the New England Highway in early-1933 by combining the Great Northern Highway and the Brisbane-Mount Lindesay-Warwick Highway into a single uniformly-named road from Hexham to Brisbane. In 1936 the road was described by contemporary observers as being in good condition, with spectacular scenery and excellent accommodation en route.
  In 1954 the New England Highway was re-routed through Warwick along the route that was then known as the Lockyer-Darling Downs Highway. Against the wishes of the Beaudesert Shire Council and the Woodenbong Chamber of Commerce,  the former New England Highway through Beaudesert was renamed the Mount Lindesay Highway.
  In the 1970s, the Queensland Main Roads Department rerouted the designation of the New England Highway north of Warwick to follow the former Lockyer-Darling Downs Highway (national route 17) so that it terminated in Toowoomba. The section of the highway between Brisbane and Warwick was renamed as part of the Cunningham Highway, which until that time had extended only westward from Warwick to Goondiwindi.
caption: Thunderbolts Rocks, New England Highway (south of Uralla), where Thunderbolt conducted some of his robberies.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "E5400", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery12.0.1308.1023", "Image DateTime": "2008:03:29 17:37:13", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2330", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "6310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4944", "EXIF ExposureTime": "10/2673", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:03:28 14:07:36", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:03:28 14:07:36", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1956", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1383", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "6144", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "46A8B8C20FF04E8B808EA0A370846F8D", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4156"}