HEYSEN TUNNELS - ROAD ENGINNERING PROJECT
ADELAIDE HILLS - ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Adelaide is ringed by the Adelaide Hills and has one of the most spectacular road entrances of all the mainland Capital cities of Australia. Spectacular yes and dangerous!!!!!
Too often in the morning one would wake up to hear on the radio that the up track or the down track of the South Eastern Freeway was blocked due to a truck having rolled over at Eagle on the Hill or Devils elbow and blocking the traffic.
Entry to the tunnels - Adelaide City side.
So they decided to make the road safer, shorter and easier to navigate and built the Heysen Tunnels. This was a major engineering effort and took a good three to four years to complete.
The tunnels are named after a famous South Australian painter Hans Heysen who lived in Hahndorf (one of the townships near the tunnels) and painted many scenes of the area.
As you can see there are two tunnels. One to go up and one to go down. They are now only open to vehicluar traffic.... so what are all those people doing there. Well early this year before the official opening they held a charity day where you could go up and walk through the tunnels to see them before they were open only to traffic so DH John, DS Peter and I went for the trip.
It was a VERY HOT DAY even by Adelaide standards and it can get very hot here but in the tunnels it was quite pleasant. There is Peter drinking a cold Coke and the photo is taken looking down the tunnel towards the city. We are in the "up tunnel" walking up to the top. The grade is deceptive...it is really quite steep and a bit of a work out if you are not fit. I am not fit! However we got to the top safely to enjoy wine, kiddy rides and all sorts of good food on offer!
Here is Peter and me commemorating the historic moment. You can see the curve of the tunnel going to the top of the hill. There are lots of escape routes etc if there should be a problem in the tunnel and that day you can see the emergency services were well in evidence..... NB the orange suited persons in the background.
Peter as nearly 6 year olds will do is pulling a funny face which mercifully is unable to be seen in this photo!!!
It was a pleasant day, good exercise and raised a lot of money for charity as well as being a historic moment in the history of the state. Now we lie in bed of a morning and listen to the traffic reports and hear the reporter say with a sense of satisfaction ...." and the traffic is moving freely down the south eastern freeway through the Heysen Tunnels!!!!