Sturt Highway

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Sturt Highway

Length	959 kilometres
General direction:	West-East
From:	Gawler, SA
To:	9 km north of Tarcutta, NSW
Towns along highway:	Nuriootpa, Renmark, Mildura, Balranald, Hay, Narrandera, Wagga Wagga,

The South Australian/Victorian Border

The Sturt Highway passes through Truro without a bypass.

The Sturt Highway, outside of Gawler, South Australia

The Sturt Highway is an Australian highway in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

The Sturt Highway is the main highway route between Sydney and Adelaide. The Sturt Highway commences at its junction with the Hume Highway near Gundagai south west of Sydney. The Highway heads more or less due west, passing through the northwest of Victoria, and linking the towns of Wagga Wagga, Narrandera, Hay, Balranald, Mildura, Renmark and Gawler. The highway carries the route number National 20 in New South Wales and National Highway A20 in Victoria and South Australia. Route A20 continues from Gawler south towards Adelaide along Main North Road.

None of the Sturt Highway is constructed as dual-carriageway, although a number of overtaking lanes have been added in recent years to help make it safer with the high volume of traffic.^[1] Major 'S'-bend curves near Waikerie have been realigned, and further upgrades to the road are planned up to 2009. ^[2]

The Sturt Highway is named after Charles Sturt, who explored south western New South Wales, the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers and also parts of the deserts of central Australia in the 1820s and 1830s. The highway crosses the Murrumbidgee at Balranald having followed that river for much of the route from the Hume Highway, and crosses the Murray a total of four times:

At Mildura over a high arched bridge
At Paringa (near Renmark) over a lift-span bridge which used to have a railway through the middle as well as the road carriageway on each side
At Kingston over a high bridge from an embankment on the right bank to the cliffs on the left bank
At Blanchetown over another high bridge to cliffs on the right bank.

As well as linking with the Hume Highway, the Sturt Highway connects with:

the Newell Highway at Narrandera
the Mid-Western Highway at Hay
the Mallee Highway at Balranald
the Murray Valley Highway east of Euston
the Silver City Highway at Buronga
the Calder Highway at Mildura
the Barossa Valley Highway at both Nuriootpa and Gawler.
Main North Road at Gawler

The Sturt highway is proposed to be extended by 22 km from Gawler southwest to meet Port Wakefield Road at Waterloo Corner as part of the AusLink project creating a new road known as the Northern Expressway. This will provide better access for road transport to Port Adelaide and the industrial areas west and northwest of the city.^[3]

The Sturt Highway was allocated a National Route 20 shield. With Victoria and South Australia's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s, these sections were altered to a A20 designation.