to the tablelands west of Yass. From here the highway runs eastward, to Goulburn where it again turns northeast. Most of the New South Wales countryside from Albury to Marulan has been developed for wool production, with Yass and Goulburn in particular noted for their fine wool. History The coast of New South Wales, from the Queensland to the Victorian borders, is separated from the inland by an escarpment, forming the eastern edge of the Great Dividing Range, with few easy routes up this escarpment. To climb from the coast to the tablelands, Hume Highway uses the Bargo Ramp, a geological feature which provides one of the few easy crossings of the escarpment. In the first twenty years of European settlement at Sydney (established 1788), exploration southwest of Sydney was slow. This area was heavily wooded at the time, especially the "Bargo brush", which was regarded as almost impenetrable. In 1798 explorers (Wilson, Price, Hacking, and Collins) reached the Moss Vale and Marulan districts, but this was not followed up. Any settlement would have to await the construction of an adequate access track, which would have been beyond the colony's resources at the time, and would have served little purpose as a source of supplies for Sydney, due to the time taken to reach Sydney. In 1804, Charles Throsby penetrated through the Bargo brush to the country on the tablelands near Moss Vale and Sutton Forest. On another expedition in 1818, he reached Lake Bathurst and the "Goulburn Plains". Many of the early explorers would most likely have used aboriginal guides, but they do not appear to have given them credit. After Charles Throsby's 1818 journey towards present day Goulburn, followed by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell's overland journey from Appin (near Campbelltown) to Port Phillip and return in 1824, development of the Southern Tablelands for agriculture was rapid. The present route of Hume Highway is much the same as that used by the pioneers. The route taken by Hume Highway to climb from the coast to the Southern Tablelands and across the Great Divide is situated between the parallel river gorge systems of the Wollondilly and Shoalhaven rivers. This country consists generally of a gently sloping plateau which is deeply dissected by the Nepean River and its tributaries. The route of the Highway, by using four high-level bridges to cross these gorges, avoids the Razorback Range, and has minimal