Tramps Like Us

It may not be Springsteen’s Highway 9, but the Great Western Highway is a lovely piece of road.

A five minute drive from our home in Rozelle gets you to its starting point where the City West Link meets Parramatta Road. Under the initial guises of the Western Motorway it moves you quickly through the expanses of Sydney’s western suburbs before crossing the Blue Mountains, climbing over the Great Dividing Range and dropping into the Macquarie Valley to its end point at Bathurst.

That’s some 210km and, from there, the state’s west opens up before you.

One day I’ll show Austin the road in its entirety, most likely en route to Parkes and its famous radio telescope, but today was just a grey day excursion. An excuse to get out of the house. A way of making sure he stays still long enough to finish his bottle.

And he did, pretty quickly in fact.

Of course, a roadtrip is nothing if short, so we stayed on the Great Western all the way to Minchinbury and stopped for lunch and a play at Mount Druitt before heading back home.

Around 80km in total and, yes, there are parks just around the corner. But we are boys after all. And I know The Boss would approve.