Goulburn Valley Highway

The highway roughly follows the course of the Goulburn River, a tributary of the Murray River. The Highway serves the fruit and vegetable growing areas of the Goulburn Valley in Victoria, one of Australia's most productive agricultural regions.

The highway runs from Eildon to Seymour as a two lane single carriageway sealed road with shoulders. The section from the Hume Freeway to Arcadia via Nagambie has been fully converted into a dual carriageway and has been renamed as the Goulburn Valley Freeway. The freeway upgrade has made sections of the original Goulburn Valley Highway redundant, either incorporated into the new freeway or acting as local access roads. The freeway section is covered with a speed limit of 110 km/h, the standard speed limit for rural freeways in Australia. Between Arcadia and Tocumwal the highway is a two lane single carriageway but with tactile road lines, wide shoulders and small sections of 3 or 4 lane single carriageway road for overtaking. The Goulburn Valley Highway crosses the Murray River at Tocumwal to join the Newell Highway in New South Wales.

The Goulburn Valley Highway exit to Seymour and Yea near the Hume Freeway

The passing of the Highways and Vehicles Act of 1924[2] through the Parliament of Victoria provided for the declaration of State Highways, roads two-thirds financed by the State government through the Country Roads Board (later VicRoads). The Goulburn Valley Highway was declared a State Highway in the 1946/47 financial year,[3] from Seymour via Murchison and Shepparton to Strathmerton (for a total of 88 miles); before this declaration, these road were referred to as Goulburn Valley Road, Murchison-Shepparton Road and Shepparton-Numurkah-Cobram Road.[4] In the 1959/60 financial year, the eastern section from Eildon via Alexandra and Yea to Seymour was added,[5] along the Upper Goulburn Road (from Eildon to Trawool, where it crossed the Goulburn River), and then along Seymour-Yea Road to Seymour.[5] The last section, from Yarroweyah to the border with NSW just outside Tocumwal, was added in June 1983,[6][7] along Benalla-Tocumwal Road north of the Murray Valley Highway. The section of the highway between Shepparton and Strathmerton was re-aligned in September 1985: from running through Numurkah and Katunga on the eastern side of the Tocumwal railway line to meet the Murray Valley Highway in Strathmerton, to its current alignment (formerly called Ancliffe Road) bypassing Numurkah on the western side of the railway to meet the Murray Valley Highway 4 kilometres west of Strathmerton; the former alignment is now known as Tocumwal Road through Numurkah, and Numurkah Road beyond to Strathmerton.[8]

The Goulburn Valley Highway was signed as National Route 39 between Seymour and Tocumwal in 1965, and State Route 168 between Seymour and Eildon in 1986.[9] The Whitlam government introduced the federal National Roads Act 1974,[10] where roads declared as a National Highway were still the responsibility of the states for road construction and maintenance, but were fully compensated by the Federal government for money spent on approved projects.[10]^: S7 As an important interstate link between the capitals of Victoria and Queensland, the Goulburn Valley Highway was declared a National Highway between Seymour and Tocumwal in 1992.[11] With Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s, this was updated to route A39 between Seymour and Tocumwal, and replaced by B340 from Seymour to Eildon. As stages of the highway north of Seymour are successively converted to freeway-standard, these sections are updated from route A39 to route M39.

The passing of the Road Management Act 2004[12] granted the responsibility of overall management and development of Victoria's major arterial roads to VicRoads: in 2011, VicRoads re-declared this road as Goulburn Valley Freeway (Freeway #1640), beginning in Seymour and ending in Arcadia,[13] while re-declaring the remnants between Eildon and the border with New South Wales as Goulburn Valley Highway (Arterial #6640).[14]

Plans to convert the highway into a freeway-standard road between Seymour and Shepparton dated from 1992, as a direct result of its declaration as a National Highway.[11] Construction on the first section to be converted, 16 km from the interchange with the Hume Freeway in Seymour to just south of Nagambie, started in January 1999;[15] this included the relocation of the Aboriginal Scar Tree, a dead tree bearing scars where wood had been cut for a shield or dish, in consultation with the local Taungurung Aboriginal People,[15] and who also attended the opening ceremony in a new south-bound rest area in April 2001.[16] The Murchison East deviation opened in February 2003 (almost eleven months early), allowing a more-direct alignment of the road instead of via Murchison East and Moorlim and shortening the distance between Melbourne and Shepparton by 4 km.[17]

• Highways in Australia
• List of highways in Victoria
• Freeways in Australia § Victoria