page_title: The Wool Road (New South Wales)
section_title: Realignment and alternative routes
hierarchical_section_title: The Wool Road (New South Wales) / Realignment and alternative routes
caption_attribution_description: English: Bulee Gap on 1841 route of The Wool Road viewed from where the 1841 road merged with the later 1856 road (looking north). The cutting is man-made and was created by blasting a gap through the sandstone rock formation. The road was built using convict labour during 1841.
context_page_description: The Wool Road was a historic road of New South Wales, Australia, that ran from Nerriga to what is now Vincentia on Jervis Bay. It was constructed privately in 1841, using convict labour. Its purpose was to provide a shorter route to a seaport for wool grown at Braidwood and beyond.
  The historical significance of The Wool Road is that it was the first road, capable of being used by wheeled vehicles, linking the inland area around Braidwood to the South Coast. The road led to the foundation of the privately-owned port town of South Huskisson and the adjacent 'government townshIp' of Huskisson.
  The Wool Road's route made its use difficult and the port on Jervis Bay was not a success. In 1856, the original road was realigned and extended to Terara instead of Jervis Bay, becoming the Braidwood Road. The old route through the coastal escarpment to Jervis Bay fell into disuse for many years.
  Much of the original route of The Wool Road remains in use today but some parts are accessible only to four-wheel drive traffic. Only a part of the original route that is currently in use is known as The Wool Road or The Old Wool Road today—the section from the Princes Highway to Vincentia.
context_section_description: The discovery of gold in the Braidwood (Major's Creek), Araluen and Nerriga areas in the early 1850s provided an impetus for better roads to the coast.
  In 1856, The Wool Road was realigned—based on a new survey by George Legge—to bypass the steep Bulee Gap section and continued, as a new branch off the original 1841 route, via Nowra Hill to a wharf at Terara—just east of modern-day Nowra—on the tidal part of the Shoalhaven River. The new road included a bridge across the Endrick River and its elevation decreased gradually from Sassafrass to Nowra. This 1856 government road became the modern day Braidwood Road (MR92). It was capable of being used by bullock drays and wool, in loads of between 24 and 50 bales, was transported over it to Nowra until the early years of the 20th century. From the line of the new Braidwood Road, another new road—built in the late 1860s and known as 'the Turpentine Road'—branched eastward to Tomerong. It still provides a much gentler gradient to Jervis Bay, on a route to the north of the older and steeper 1841 Wool Road that passed through the Wandean Gap.
  The Clyde Road—first used in early 1858 and later a part of the King's Highway—was built from Braidwood, via Clyde Mountain and following a line surveyed by Sir Thomas Mitchell  in 1855, to the Clyde River at Nelligen, which became a port.  Another road to the coast—the Araluen Road—was built from Araluen to Moruya, in 1867-1868.
  The Main Southern railway line and other rail lines were constructed in the second half of the 19th century, confining bullock drays to transporting wool from outlying areas to the new railheads, particularly Goulburn (after 1869) from where the wool could be carried quickly to Sydney. Before the railway was extended beyond Goulburn, the town had sixty carriers delivering to the railhead. In 1893, the South Coast railway line reached Bomaderry, just north of Nowra, providing a second railhead.
  A section of the original The Wool Road from Nerriga that passed through the Bulee Gap cutting was bypassed by the 1856 route but it remained in use as an alternative stock route to the corresponding part to the newer Braidwood Road. During the Second World War, a part of this section of the original road was deliberately destroyed using explosives, to limit access by an enemy to the inland area and the national capital, Canberra.
caption: Bulee Gap—Man-made cutting viewed from where the 1841 route merged with the 1856 road. (February 2019).
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