We’re all familiar with the standard distance markers that we see on the sides of all of our roads. They come in a range of different sizes and sometimes colours and tell us how far we have to go to the next town or towns.

But sometimes, if you look carefully, you will see old ones out there. They vary in size and shape but you’ll know one when you see it. Most of the ones that I’m now familiar with are made of precast concrete. You’ll find them on the left hand side of the road, and as was the way, near large cities they were generally placed at one mile intervals from the GPO.

The first one I saw was mile marker 1 on the “Great Western Road” from Geelong and 145 miles from Hamilton. Today, this is actually Aberdeen Street in Newtown before it soon turns into the Hamilton Highway – the gateway to the west. If you continue westwards on Aberdeen Street and look carefully you find mile marker 2 outside the Geelong College Preparatory School at the very top of the Fyansford deviation. Mile marker 3 is at the bottom of the deviation in Fyansford, right in front of the Fyansford Hotel. From there on, I can find no more markers on the highway.

There’s a range of possible reasons – they’ve been moved as the road was widened, resurfaced, or direction altered; they’ve been souvenired and sit in someone’s yard; or they’re just long-long gone.

There’s also one on the Bellarine Highway (the Geelong - Queenscliff Road) just as you enter Queenscliff proper. It’s on the left side and marks 18 miles from Geelong and 1 mile from Queenscliff. It looks to be a lot newer than the ones on the Hamilton Highway and is perhaps a fairly recent replacement.

There’s supposed to be one on the Midland Highway (the road to Ballarat) on Bell Post Hill but it aligns with where the ring road punched through there a few years back. My guess is that like so much of the past, it’s gone and forgotten.

Metric measurement was officially introduced in Australia in July 1974 so these markers, in miles, clearly originally predate this. For a lot their exact age is unclear. But they’re out there if you look around!

Have fun out there. Look around - you never know what you’ll see!

CG