Remembrance Driveway

What the Remembrance Driveway Is

The Remembrance Driveway is not a separate road. It is a 320-kilometre memorial overlay on the Hume and Federal Highways between Sydney and Canberra, the most travelled national corridor in Australia. Along this route, 24 roadside rest areas are each dedicated to an Australian Victoria Cross recipient. Every one of these rest areas features a granite memorial pillar with a portrait of the recipient, their name, rank, unit, and a summary of the action that earned them the highest military decoration in the Commonwealth.

The concept is simple and powerful. Instead of building a single monument in one place, the memorial is the road itself. You encounter it gradually, rest area by rest area, across 320 kilometres. By the time you reach Canberra, you have driven past the stories of 24 Australians who did extraordinary things under fire.

The Victoria Cross Rest Areas

The rest areas run from Menangle in southwest Sydney to the Australian War Memorial in Campbell, Canberra. Each stop is free, open 24 hours, and accessible from the highway.

Hume Highway Section (Sydney to Goulburn)

Federal Highway Section (Goulburn to Canberra)

Australian War Memorial, Campbell (Canberra)

Driving the Route

Sydney to Pheasants Nest (70 km, 1 hour)

The Driveway begins at Macquarie Place in central Sydney, where Queen Elizabeth II planted two London Plane trees on 5 February 1954. From there you head south on the Hume Motorway through Campbelltown and past Camden. The first VC rest area is Sir Roden Cutler at Prestons, then Partridge VC at Menangle. At Pheasants Nest you pass the two newest stops: Kenna VC (northbound, 2012) and Keith Payne VC (southbound, 2023), the most recent addition to the Driveway.

Pheasants Nest to Marulan (90 km, 1 hour)

Through the Southern Highlands, the Hume Highway passes Gordon VC and Mackey VC near Sutton Forest and Moss Vale, then Kingsbury VC at Penrose. The cluster of Chowne VC and Derrick VC near Marulan marks the transition from the Hume to the Federal Highway.

Federal Highway to Canberra (160 km, 1.5 hours)

The Federal Highway section runs along the western shore of Lake George, one of the most striking stretches of highway in NSW. The VC rest areas come in quick succession through here: Edmondson, Gratwick, Gurney, Badcoe, Wheatley, and Anderson. The route crosses into the ACT at the Middleton and Newton rest areas, passes Edwards VC at Majura, and terminates at the Australian War Memorial in Campbell. The four memorial parks on Treloar Crescent honouring Kelliher, Rattey, Simpson, and Starcevich mark the end of the road.

The Stories

Every granite pillar along this route tells the story of a person who did something most of us cannot imagine. Frank Partridge was twenty years old when he crawled forward under machine-gun fire on Bougainville, badly wounded in the arm and leg, to retrieve a Bren gun from beside a dead mate and rush a Japanese bunker with a grenade and a knife. Keith Payne, a warrant officer with the Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam, led his company of South Vietnamese soldiers through an ambush and spent hours moving through enemy positions in the dark to rescue the wounded, carrying them on his back. John Edmondson charged a German machine-gun post at Tobruk with his bayonet and was killed, becoming the first Australian to receive the Victoria Cross in World War II.

These are not abstract histories. They are stories of individuals who made decisions under fire that changed the course of battles. The granite pillars give them a face and a place on the road, and the road gives them something better than a museum case. It gives them traffic. Thousands of drivers pass these memorials every day, and some of them stop, and some of those read the plaques, and some of those remember.

Planning Your Drive

The full drive from Sydney to Canberra takes about 3 hours without stops. If you want to stop at every VC rest area and read the memorials, allow 5 to 6 hours. Most rest areas have parking, toilets, and picnic tables. Some have shelters and food trucks.

The best approach for families is to pick a section rather than trying to do the whole route in one day. The Hume Highway section through the Southern Highlands (Gordon VC to Derrick VC) has the densest cluster and the most developed facilities. The Federal Highway section along Lake George is the most scenic.

Every rest area is free, open 24 hours, and accessible from the highway. No booking required. No entry fee. Just pull over, get out, and read the story of someone who earned the Victoria Cross.