The self-guided tour shows how road transport has improved. First there were the early tracks arising from land settlement, then Mitchell's Great South Road. Later the Main Roads Board constructed the Hume Highway as a two lane two-way road and in the present day we have a four lane divided road over the full length bypassing country towns. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gw1IvM3QHU2tKlSjrR3rEKsVBtkGrROE/view?usp=sharing

Marulan's original Post Office opened at Old Marulan (corner Hume Highway and Marulan South Road) in 1836. Being on the main southern road at the time Marulan enjoyed a good mail service daily except on Fridays. By 1848 a two-horse coach was running from Camden to Picton, Berrima, Marulan and Goulburn. By 1866 a large camp of railway workers had set up near the new railway line and the Terminus Hotel had been built. There was great demand for a Post Office to be opened at the 'Marulan Camp' in the rail terminus building. Phil Dignam MP was asked to name the new Post Office. As a private township had been laid out and sold under the name Mooroowoollen, he suggested that be the name of the Post Office. The Mooroowoollen Post Office grew in importance because it was the terminus of the southern railway. Mail from here was dispatched by Cobb & Co and coached to all points south. Mooroowoollen officially became Marulan on 1 September 1878 and in 1885 the railway depa...

When I first started independent road trips in the late ‘70s, the country was a different place. Luxuries like power steering, air-conditioning and satellite navigation were things of the future and the major highways - like the Hume - passed through little towns and villages all along the way.  Nowadays, the great bitumen ribbon is only interrupted by cookie-cutter roadhouses and big-name service centres, feeding traffic past once-thriving communities that relied on the volume of passing trade for economic survival. Using existing historical research and maps provided by NSW Transport , I propose a magazine feature (or features) retracing as much of the original route as is still accessible. Even before the Hume Highway, a southern route to Melbourne wound its way through the countryside, joining the burgeoning agricultural settlements that were springing up all across the fledgeling colony. The project would involve creating a historical, self-guided journey along the route...