Calder Freeway

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Calder Freeway
M79 40
Calder Highway
A79
Length 557 kilometres
General direction: Northwest-Southeast
Highway section:
From: NSW border northwest of Mildura, Victoria
To: Kyneton, Victoria
Freeway section:
From: Kyneton, Victoria
To: Essendon, Melbourne
Towns along highway: Mildura, Ouyen, Charlton, Bendigo, Kyneton, Gisborne
The Calder Freeway and Mt. Macedon.
The Calder Freeway and Mt. Macedon.
The Calder Highway, passing through Irymple.
The Calder Highway, passing through Irymple.
The end of the Calder Highway, near Curlwaa, New South Wales.
The end of the Calder Highway, near Curlwaa, New South Wales.
Fruit disposal bins and warning signs along the Calder Highway, approaching the Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone near Mildura.
Fruit disposal bins and warning signs along the Calder Highway, approaching the Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone near Mildura.

Calder Freeway is a freeway linking Melbourne to Kyneton in Victoria, Australia. Originally just a short spur of the Tullamarine Freeway linking to the Calder Highway in Keilor in suburban Melbourne, it has been extended in phases to Kyneton subsuming all the older Calder highway stretches. It continues beyond as Calder Highway through to Bendigo and to Mildura. The Victorian Government hopes to complete the duplication of the Calder Highway from Melbourne to Bendigo by the end of 2009.

The Calder Highway was named after William Calder, who was chairman of the Victorian road construction authority formerly known as the Country Roads Board from 1913 to 1928. The CRB is today known as VicRoads.

The highway was originally allocated a National Route 79 shield. With Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s this was altered to a A79 designation for the majority highway portion, and a M79 designation for the remaining freeway portion into Melbourne.

South of the Victoria/New South Wales border the highway is a two-lane, single carriageway in each direction, continuing through northwest Victoria from the Abbotsford Bridge, through Merbein to the major regional town of Mildura in the state's north-west. Here also it crosses the Sturt Highway (A20), leading to capital cities Adelaide heading west and Sydney heading east. It crosses the Mallee Highway (B12) at Ouyen and runs south-east eventually to Bendigo.

The Calder Alternate Highway, A790 leaves the A79 just north of Ravenswood and bypasses the Bendigo suburban area, rejoining the A79 at Marong, west of Bendigo.

North of the Victoria/New South Wales border, the highway continues north to Broken Hill, Tibooburra and the New South Wales/Queensland border as the Silver City Highway, under the standard 79 national route shield as far as Broken Hill. Additionally, more recent travel guides, such as Explore Australia and Gregory's show the Thomson Developmental Road in west-central Queensland as carrying the 79 national route shield.

Towns along the A79, from the border towards Melbourne, include:

Just north-west of Kyneton, the Calder Highway, A79 becomes the Calder Freeway, M79, adopting freeway standards, and begins bypassing most of the towns the old alignment of the highway used to serve. Former bypassed sections of the Calder Highway are generally designated sequentially from C791 to C794, or (oddly enough) still keep the old National Route 79 shield (within suburban Melbourne).

Towns bypassed by, but still accessible from, the M79 from this point include:

It gains the Metro 40 shield at the Green Gully Road interchange in Keilor, which continues east onto the Tullamarine Freeway city-bound, along with the old National Route 79 shield.

[edit] Interchanges

The suburban secton of the M79 officially begins just outside the Calder Park Raceway but still uses highway-style at-grade intersections until Keilor, where it adopts full separated-grade interchanges, bridges and ramps. Interchanges are listed below.

[edit] See also

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