00:00We've all heard of Piccadilly Circus in London but did you know we also have one
00:06here in the ACT. Up in the Brindabellas our Piccadilly Circus is well a little
00:17bit more isolated and it's also not anywhere near as busy so how did it get
00:28its name? Well according to local legend after Forrester Cyril Cole visited England
00:35during the Second World War he returned here to ironically name this remote
00:41intersection on the border of the ACT and New South Wales.
00:48Canberra's Piccadilly Circus is a four-way intersection that's Two Sticks Road which
00:54leads through Yowie Country to Mount Corrie. That's Brindabella Road which
00:59eventually leads to Tumut. There's Mount Franklin Road that takes you over the
01:05spine of the Brindabellas towards Mount Ginger and back that way is Canberra
01:09about 50 kilometers away. But Piccadilly Circus is about to get a whole lot
01:14busier. Roadworks are about to commence on the section between here following the
01:20Brindabella Road all the way down to the Gudra Digby Valley about 10 and a half
01:24kilometers. There's 40 million dollars or so being pushed into the project and
01:29it's going to take five or six years to complete. It's going to be resealed and
01:32widened. So I thought today I'd drive the road for one last time in its current
01:38condition. The first car believed to drive this route was way back in 1903 when
01:45Alexander Wilkie Watson, founder of the Tumut Advocate, traversed the rugged range
01:50towards Canberra in a motor vehicle demonstrating that it could serve as a
01:55genuine vehicular link between Tumut and the developing capital region.
02:08Welcome to the beautiful Brindabella Valley, the endpoint of the roadworks. And what
02:14a spectacular valley it is, hemmed in on all sides by mountains and with the
02:19Gudra Digby River flowing right through the middle. I love it.
Comments