Princes Highway

The Princes Highway is a segment of Australia's Highway 1 that extends from Sydney to Adelaide and Port Augusta, South Australia, via Melbourne. The highway approximately follows the coastline between the three cities, and thus takes quite an indirect and lengthy route, which is 1784 kilometres.

There is one frustrated cop around Rosedale who might tell you that it's illegal to hitch.

Sydney to Melbourne

Overall its an easy hitch if you aren't in a rush.

The time of the day and day of the week is very important when hitching along this section of the highway. All of the towns are 40 to about 80ks apart (longer after Bega), and as a result there's a lot of local traffic going in between.

If you think about peoples habit's and where and when traffic will be moving, with a little bit of planning you can use to this your advantage. However, if you're trying to hitch at a time of the day that doesn't make sense for local traffic, the road tends to be quiet and waits are much longer.

Overall this section of the highway is pretty easy to hitch along, the speed limit changes to 60ks as it travels directly through towns and there tends to be room for cars to pull over most of the time. It isn't for people who are in a hurry, as the reality is most of the traffic isn't used to hitchers and you'll often get a lot of funny looks, so although you can use the local traffic habits to your advantage, you have to be willing to wait if things don't pan out. Also, the further south along the highway you go, the more spread out the towns and the more redneck the drivers become. To combat this you can hitch on weekends, when there's also out of town traffic which is more likely to be traveling longer distances in the direction of Melbourne. Also, the traffic to melbourne will be more often as you head further south in Victoria. (Louisa and Liam started hitching at 7am on Sunday just outside of Narooma and got to Melbourne by 4.30pm in 3 rides, none were local traffic).

On weekdays, its easy to catch rides with people traveling to and from work, so mornings and afternoons work best. On weekends, its much easier to get longer rides and cover more ground as there is a better chance people will be heading longer distances for a holiday, visiting friends or family, etc. and vice versa for Sunday, as people will be traveling home. On Saturday's you can make the most of this trend and cover a lot of ground by starting at dawn, whereas Sundays are much more lazed with people traveling home from any time.

Signs tend to work really well when you're trying to catch local traffic.

Getting out of Sydney

Louisa and Liam got a concession ticket to Wollongong from Central ($4.50 each) and stayed on the train until the end of the line which takes you to Dapto. If traffic cops harass you just claim you fell asleep, but if they don't believe you or are jerks, you can get a $200 fine. Its a 2 hour train ride and if you get off at dapto, you end up about 200m from the highway. Theres a shopping centre ("Dapto Mall") which is on the highway and really close to the train station, so if you need a pit stop and food its easily accessible. For a good hitching spot walk 600m south from the shopping centre and there's a bus stop which gives room for cars to pull over with a long line is visibility. {Louisa and Liam waited here for 15mins before getting a ride).

wikipedia:Princes Highway