Struth! Take a wide berth

 
IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says you need to look to the right, to the left and then to the right again more than once when crossing the main street of Trundle in country NSW – its an amazing 66-metres wide (that’s 157-feet, or the equivalent of three cricket pitches,) making what locals claim is the widest street in Australia.

And it’s because when Trundle was first pegged out in the late 1800s it was intended that its main street run at right-angles to the-then Travelling Stock Route that the town would be built alongside, and which by law had to be at least three chains (60-metres) wide so bullock trains had enough room to turn around and reverse.

But like all good intentions, commerce and council couldn’t get together and commercial buildings started popping-up alongside and parallel with the Stock Route, with in fact the Stock Route becoming Trundle’s main street, renamed where it went through town Forbes Street.

Today, Trundle’s locals joke that you need something from the take-away or the pub to see you through from one side of their main street to the other.