One of my favourite day trip drive near Sydney is the Oberon to Goulburn Drive. I’ve done this drive in both directions and its a great mix of different roads, plus limited traffic. I even incorporated this road in my recent trip to Melborne.
I had also seen that the parallel road that goes south out of Bathurst was also paved in the last 10 years. This road head south until it hits Crookwell, where you can either keep going south to Gunning, or veer off to Goulburn.
I wanted to try this as another full day trip from Sydney, as well as have it as a candidate as part of bigger road trips. I had a full day free, so I got a small group of friends together and we went and tried it out.
We met at McDonalds Lithgow. I took the back way there, via Galston Gorge, Maraylya and Bells Line of Road. This is a pretty good drive in itself and far better than the obnoxious Great Western Highway. We had three cars on our drive, my 560SEC a 380SEC and a W211.
From Lithgow, we left the main roads and headed towards Lake Lyell. This was quite a scenic spot and we continued past it towards O’Connell. Parts of this road were good and other parts were full of large potholes. We past the turn offs to Oberon which would have taken us on the normal road to Goulburn.
We continued along towards George’s plain before heading south towards Tuena. The main part of the road south was pretty good. There was minimal traffic and it was quite scenic. We stopped for Lunch at the little coffee shop at Tuna before heading south towards Crookwell and Goulburn.
We all really enjoyed the drive. If I had to pick, I would probably rate the Oberon – Goulburn road slightly better. However, the combination of both allows for an interesting possibility of doing a more adventurous day trip of avoiding the M31 and doing both roads in a single day. It would add another 100km and a few hours to the trip, but I think be worth it with an early start.
I was pretty happy with my SEC performed on the trip. The owner of the 380SEC had just replaced his valve seals and that car was running better than ever. The W211 also made the trip without incident. It is probably one of the nicest series 1 W211s left in the country.
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