Sturt Highway is an Australian national highway in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. It is an important road link for the transport of passengers and freight between Sydney and Adelaide and the regions along the route.^[8]

Quick Facts Sturt Highway South Australia–New South Wales, Coordinates ...

Sturt Highway South Australia –New South Wales
B-double truck on Sturt Highway
Coordinates	34.915676°S 138.622745°E / -34.915676; 138.622745 (West end) 34.977201°S 138.627219°E / -34.977201; 138.627219 (East end)
General information
Type	Highway
Length	947 km (588 mi)[1]
Gazetted	August 1928 (NSW, as Main Road 58)[2] August 1933 (NSW, as State Highway 14)[3] July 1938 (SA)[4] 1939 (VIC)[5]
Route number(s)	A20 (2013/2017–present)
Former route number	National Highway A20 (1997/1998–2013/2017) (Gawler–VIC/NSW border) National Highway 20 (1992–1997/1998) (Gawler–VIC/NSW border) National Highway 20 (1992–2013) (VIC/NSW border–Tarcutta) National Route 20 (1955–1992) Entire route
Major junctions
West end	Gawler Bypass Gawler, South Australia
	Northern Expressway Barrier Highway Barossa Valley Way Goyder Highway Calder Highway Silver City Highway Cobb Highway Kidman Way Newell Highway Olympic Highway
East end	Hume Motorway Tarcutta, New South Wales
Location(s)
Region	Barossa Light and Lower North, Murray and Mallee,[6] Loddon Mallee,[7] Far West, Riverina, South Western Slopes
Major settlements	Nuriootpa, Renmark, Mildura, Balranald, Hay, Narrandera, Wagga Wagga
Highway system
Highways in Australia National Highway • Freeways in Australia Highways in South Australia Highways in Victoria Highways in New South Wales

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Initially an amalgam of trunk routes, the 947-kilometre (588 mi) Sturt Highway was proclaimed a state highway in 1933. In 1955, the Australian Government gazetted the highway as a National Route, and upgraded it to a National Highway in 1992, forming the Sydney-Adelaide Link. Sturt Highway is allocated as route A20 for its entire length, the majority of which is a single carriageway, and freeway standard and 6-lane arterial road standard towards its western terminus in Gawler.^[9]

The highway is the shortest, highest-standard route between Sydney and Adelaide. It runs generally east–west, roughly aligned to the southern bank of the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales. Following that river's confluence with the Murray River, it is then roughly aligned to the Murray through north-western Victoria and eastern South Australia, before it heads towards the northern outskirts of Adelaide.^[9]

The eastern terminus of Sturt Highway is at a junction with Hume Highway at Tarcutta, near Gundagai. Heading west, the highway passes through the city of Wagga Wagga and the towns Narrandera, Darlington Point, Hay, Balranald, Euston, leaving New South Wales by crossing the Murray River into Victoria from Buronga to Mildura. The highway continues more or less due west through the northwest of Victoria before entering South Australia. In South Australia, Sturt Highway passes Renmark, Monash, Barmera, Waikerie, Blanchetown and Nuriootpa, before reaching its western terminus at the interchange with Gawler Bypass and Northern Expressway on the outskirts of Gawler.

The route now known as Sturt Highway originated from stock routes cut across southern New South Wales through the 19th century: overlanders would travel from Sydney's Main South Road (now Hume Highway) to Albury, and follow along the southern bank of the Murray River to Adelaide. Edward John Eyre, the English explorer, travelled from Limestone Plains (now Canberra) to Adelaide via this route in 1837, as did Charles Sturt in 1838. Eyre on his second run to South Australia headed west, following the northern bank of the Murrumbidgee River instead, crossing it at its junction with the Murray close to Boundary Bend, and travelled to Adelaide from there.^[5] The road pioneered by Eyre in 1839 left Hume Highway at Gundagai and followed the northern bank of the Murrumbidgee through the sites of Wagga Wagga, Narrandera, Hay and Balranald, and the north bank of the Murray River through the sites of Euston and Wentworth, passing north of Lake Victoria to the border with South Australia and onwards to Renmark. By 1852 a mail service by horseback operated from Wagga Wagga as far west as Balranald.^[5]

The route used by coaches between Wagga Wagga and the South Australian border as late as 1914 ran along the northern bank of the Murrumbidgee to Darlington Point – a bridge was built across the river in 1905, replacing a punt service operating from 1886 – and then continued along the river's southern bank to Hay, crossing the river again (a bridge in Hay was opened in 1874 by Sir Henry Parkes, replacing a ferry service operating since the 1850s).^[5] The route then travelled the northern side of the Murrumbidgee through Maude and Balranald and onwards to Adelaide. By 1919 the route from Hay had been altered to travel the river's southern bank to Maude, before departing the water course for a more-direct route to Balranald, crossing the river there by a bridge opened in 1876.^[5] By 1928, the route had shifted south of the Murrumbidgee River between Tarcutta and Narrandera.

The passing of the Main Roads Act of 1924^[10] through the Parliament of New South Wales provided for the declaration of Main Roads, roads partially funded by the State government through the Main Roads Board (later the Department of Main Roads, and eventually Transport for NSW). Main Road No. 4 was declared along this road from the intersection with Hume Highway from Lower Tarcutta to Wagga Wagga (and continuing eastwards via Tumut, Adaminaby, Cooma, and Bega to Tathra) as part of Monaro Highway,^[2] Main Road No. 6 was declared from Balranald via Euston and Wentworth to the state border with South Australia (and continuing eastwards via Oxley, Booligal, Gunbar, Rankins Springs, Wyalong and Cowra to Bathurst) as part of Mid-Western Highway,^[2] and Main Road No. 58 was declared from Hay via Narranderra to Wagga Wagga (and continuing westwards via Maude to Oxley),^[2] on the same day, 8 August 1928. With the passing of the Main Roads (Amendment) Act of 1929^[11] to provide for additional declarations of State Highways and Trunk Roads, these were amended to State Highways 4 and 6 and Trunk Road 58 on 8 April 1929.

Mid-Western Highway was rerouted between Gunbar and Balranald to pass through Hay, and the western end of Trunk Road 58 was truncated to meet it at Hay, on 24 September 1929.^[12] The route of the main road from Narrandera to Darlington Point had shifted to the southern side of the river at this stage, thus following the present route east from Balranald. On 16 September 1930, the road between Wagga Wagga and Hay (Trunk Road 58) was named Sturt Trunk Road,^[13] in honour of Captain Charles Sturt who explored the area a century earlier and opened it up for agriculture.

The Department of Main Roads, which had succeeded the MRB in the previous year, declared Sturt Highway as State Highway 14 on 8 August 1933, from the intersection with Hume Highway at Lower Tarcutta via Wagga Wagga, Hay, Balranald, Euston and Wentworth to the state border with South Australia, subsuming the existing portions of Monaro Highway (State Highway 4) between Wagga Wagga and Lower Tarcutta, Sturt Trunk Road (Trunk Road 58) from Wagga Wagga to Hay, and Mid-Western Highway (State Highway 6) from Hay to the state border with South Australia.^[14][15] eventually to Adelaide via Renmark;^[3] the western end of Monaro Highway (today Snowy Mountains Highway) was truncated to meet Hume Highway in Tarcutta, and the western end of Mid-Western Highway was truncated to meet Sturt Highway in Hay, as a result.^[14] On 1 July 1938, the South Australian government decreed "the road from Gawler through Blanchetown to the border beyond Renmark will be known as the Sturt Highway", to join with the same road in New South Wales.^[4]

In 1939,^[5] Sturt Highway was rerouted to run via Mildura, using the former alignment of Murray Valley Highway, to make it the most direct route to Adelaide. Murray Valley Highway had been constructed in 1927 to provide a shorter, all-weather road connection between Mildura and Renmark,^[16][17] and was declared a State Highway by the Country Roads Board of Victoria in September 1932.^[18]

Sturt Highway was signed National Route 20 across its entire length in 1955. The Whitlam government introduced the federal National Roads Act 1974,^[19] where roads declared as a National Highway were still the responsibility of the states for road construction and maintenance, but were fully compensated by the Federal government for money spent on approved projects.^[19]: S7 As an important interstate link between the capitals of New South Wales and South Australia, Sturt Highway was declared a National Highway in 1992. With all three states' conversion to their newer alphanumeric systems between the late 1990s to the early 2010s, its former route number was updated to A20 for the highway within Victoria (in 1997), South Australia (in 1998), and eventually the New South Wales section (in 2013).^[20]

The passing of the Roads Act of 1993^[21] through the Parliament of New South Wales updated road classifications and the way they could be declared within New South Wales. Under this act, Sturt Highway today retains its declaration as Highway 14, from the intersection with Hume Highway north of Tarcutta to the bridge over the Murray River at Mildura.^[22]

The passing of the Road Management Act 2004^[23] through the Parliament of Victoria granted the responsibility of overall management and development of Victoria's major arterial roads to VicRoads: in 2004, VicRoads re-declared Sturt Highway (Arterial #6610) from the border with South Australia at Murray-Sunset to the border with New South Wales in Mildura.^[24]

From east to west, the Sturt Highway follows much of the course of the Murrumbidgee River, on its southern banks, from the Sturt's eastern terminus with the Hume Motorway. At Balranald, the Sturt Highway crosses the Murrumbidgee, carrying the highway to the north of the river via the Balranald Bridge.^[35]

To the west and south-west, Sturt Highway crosses the Murray four times:

• Between Buronga and Mildura, carrying the highway to the south of the Murray over the George Chaffey Bridge, a high concrete-girder bridge that was opened in 1985.^[36]
• Between Paringa and Renmark, carrying the highway to the north of the Murray over the Paringa Bridge, a lift-span bridge which used to have a railway through the middle as well as vehicle carriageways on each side.^[37]
• Between Cobdogla and Kingston On Murray, carrying the highway to the south of the Murray over the Kingston Bridge, a high bridge from an embankment on the right bank to the cliffs on the left bank.^[37]
• At Blanchetown, carrying the highway from east to west over the Murray, as the river flows south, over the Blanchetown Bridge, another high bridge to cliffs on the river's western bank.^[37]

The bridge at Blanchetown was originally opened in 1964.^[38] It replaced cable ferries, and was itself replaced in 1998^[39] in response to concern about its ability to continue to carry B-double trucks. The bridge at Kingston On Murray was opened in 1973,^[40] also replacing a very busy ferry crossing.

• Sturt Highway marked as A20 near Gumly Gumly
• Sturt Highway through Wagga Wagga, New South Wales
• Sturt Highway through Truro, South Australia
• The junction of the Sturt and Olympic Highways

• Highways in Australia
• List of highways in New South Wales
• List of highways in South Australia
• List of highways in Victoria