Landsborough Highway
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Landsborough Highway | |
Length | 1028 kilometres |
General direction: | Northwest-Southeast |
From: | Cloncurry, Queensland |
To: | Morven, Queensland |
Towns along highway: | Winton, Longreach, Barcaldine, Augathella |
Landsborough Highway is a western Queensland highway running in the northwest-southeast direction from Morven to Cloncurry. The Landsborough Highway runs through vast tracts of land that was once occupied by William Landsborough, an Australian explorer of the 19th century. It is also known as Matilda Highway after the popular Australian song Waltzing Matilda.
The entire highway is an important part of the National Highway system linking Darwin and Brisbane: formerly National Route 66 (Cloncurry to Barcaldine) and National Route 71 (Barcaldine to Augathella), Queensland began to convert to the alphanumeric system much of Australia had adopted in the early-2000s and is now designated as National Route A2. Its importance also stems from the fact that it is the only sealed link between Flinders Highway and Capricorn Highway apart from Gregory Development Road between Emerald and Charters Towers.
The highway services an important sheep and cattle grazing region, tourist traffic and local properties. The highway is fully sealed but with many sections of substandard width and quality. It is also flood-prone with lengthy closures during floods.
[edit] Towns
Towns along the highway are listed below:
- Augathella
- Tambo
- Blackall
- Barcaldine
- Longreach
- Winton
- Kynuna
- McKinlay
- Cloncurry