In recent years there’s been plenty of talk about road extensions and bypasses.
We’ve had a group of MPs petitioning their own government to build the F6 extension, flooding issues at Albion Park that highlight the need for a bypass there, and work beginning on the Berry stage of the Princes Highway upgrades.
We get frustrated that some of these roads aren’t already there - but a look into the past shows how far we’ve come.
Reader Alan Bond has posted a video that shows time-lapse footage of a trip from Revesby to Burrill Lake in 1971.
That’s before the F6 between Waterfall and Bulli Tops existed - it was a year into construction and you can see hints of that in this video.
It was a time when the Picton Road intersection looked like a country road.
A time when the F6 ended at Five Islands Road, rather than heading down to Yallah. A time when a trip down south meant going past the steelworks and through Warrawong.
A time before the Kiama Bypass, where motorists had to negotiate the Minnamurra bends, drive stop-start through Kiama itself, tackle the Kiama bends and then drive further south on a two-lane highway.
As Mr Bond points out at the end of the video, the trip in 1971 took four hours. Today we can do it in just over half that time.
Things have already changed quite a lot.
