Sunraysia Highway

Sunraysia Highway (route B220) is a 330 km north–south rural highway in western Victoria, linking Ouyen to the north-western Ballarat suburb of Mitchell Park, and acts as a secondary route to Calder Highway, the main route between Melbourne and Mildura. It serves a number of important industries in the region such as agriculture, viticulture, food processing, winemaking and tourism. It forms an important link for these industries to markets and ports in the south of Victoria and South Australia.

Route
Sunraysia Highway commences at the intersection with Calder Highway and heads in a southerly direction as a two-lane, single carriageway rural highway, mostly following the course of Mildura railway line through the eastern Wimmera region. It meets Henty Highway in Lascelles, takes a more south-easterly direction through Birchip and meets Borung Highway in Donald and then Wimmera Highway in St Arnaud, before heads again in a southerly direction, meeting Pyrenees Highway in Avoca and heading again in a south-easterly direction until it eventually terminates at the interchange with Western Freeway on the north-western borders of Ballarat at Mitchell Park.

History
Within Victoria, 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. Beulah-Birchip-Wycheproof Road was declared a Main Road from Ballapur to Birchip (and continuing westwards from Ballapur to Beulah, and eastwards to Wycheproof) on 14 December 1914; St Arnaud-(Donald-)Birchip Road was declared a Main Road, between Donald and Birchip on 28 May 1915, and between St Arnaud and Donald on 20 September 1915; Ballarat-(Lexton-)(Avoca-)St Arnaud Road was declared a Main Road, between Addington through Lexton and Avoca to Redbank on 31 May 1915, and from north-western Ballarat to Addington and from Redbank to St Arnaud on 20 September 1915.

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. North-Western Highway (not to be confused by Calder Highway, which was also known as North-Western Highway in the late 1920s) was declared a State Highway in the 1947/48 financial year, from Ballarat via Avoca, St Arnaud, and Donald to Birchip (for a total of 138 miles), subsuming the original declarations of Ballarat-Lexton-Avoca-St Arnaud Road and St Arnaud-Donald-Birchip Road as Main Roads. In the 1959/60 financial year, another section from Birchip via Woomelang to Lascelles was added, subsuming the original declaration of Beulah-Birchip-Wycheproof between Ballapur and Birchip as a Main Road, along the former Kinnabulla-Woomelang Road and Woomelang-Lascelles Roads. The name of the highway was later changed to Sunraysia Highway on 11 September 1972, and extended from Lascelles to the intersection with Calder Highway in Nunga, southern Ouyen, subsuming the former portion of Henty Highway between Lascelles and Nunga.

Sunraysia Highway was signed as State Route 121 between Ouyen and Ballarat in 1986; with Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s, it was replaced by route B220.

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 2013, VicRoads re-declared the road as Sunraysia Highway (Arterial #6700) between Calder Highway in Ouyen and Western Freeway at Mitchell Park in north-western Ballarat.