Hamilton Highway

Hamilton Highway is a rural highway through the Barwon South West region of Victoria, Australia, linking Geelong and the town of Hamilton.

Route
Hamilton Highway commences at the intersection of Latrobe Terrace and Portarlington Road in Geelong and heads in a westerly direction as a two-lane, single carriageway through Fyansford, crossing the Barwon River and an interchange with Geelong Ring Road, before leaving the Geelong suburbs and continuing west as a rural highway through the localities of Inverleigh, Cressy, Lismore, Mortlake, and Penshurst to eventually terminate at the intersection with Glenelg Highway at the eastern edge of Hamilton. Glenelg Highway continues west across the border with South Australia to Mount Gambier, making Hamilton Highway a popular alternative Melbourne-Mount Gambier route (being roughly 50 km shorter than a corresponding journey via the Victorian coast along Highway 1).

History
The passing of the Country Roads Act of 1912 through the Parliament of Victoria provided for the establishment of the Country Roads Board (later VicRoads) and their ability to declare Main Roads, taking responsibility for the management, construction and care of the state's major roads from local municipalities. (Geelong-) Inverleigh Road from Geelong to Inverleigh was declared a Main Road on 16 March 1914.

The passing of the Highways and Vehicles Act of 1924 provided for the declaration of State Highways, roads two-thirds financed by the State government through the Country Roads Board. Hamilton Highway was declared a State Highway in the 1959/60 financial year, from Geelong via Cressy and Mortlake to Hamilton (for a total of 143 miles), subsuming the original declaration of Geelong-Inverleigh Road as a Main Road; before this declaration, this road was referred to as Geelong-Hamilton Road.

The Geelong end of the highway was once routed along Hyland Street through Fyansford, until the construction of Deviation Road between 1931 and 1932 with unemployment labour during the Great Depression. Opened in 1933, it was cut into the hillside, the surface was originally of concrete construction. The road opened 54 years after the first petition by Fyansford residents for such a road.

A new bridge over Woady Yaloak River in Cressy was opened in 1995, at a cost of $2.86 million, adjacent to and replacing a structure built in 1854 and rebuilt in 1880 after fire damage, retained but now closed to vehicular traffic.

Hamilton Highway was signed as State Route 106 between Geelong and Hamilton in 1986; with Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s, this was replaced by route B140.

The passing of the Road Management Act 2004 granted the responsibility of overall management and development of Victoria's major arterial roads to VicRoads: in 2004, VicRoads re-declared the road as Hamilton Highway (Arterial #6780), beginning at Latrobe Terrace at Geelong and ending at Glenelg Highway in Hamilton.