What is the longest road name in Victoria?
The Victorian Government data portal has lots of great information available for anyone to use. One of the more commonly-used datasets is the Vicmap Transport series, especially the one containing information on gazetted roads. It also contains trails, tracks and even ferry routes.
This is the first in a series of posts on road names in Melbourne and Victoria.
Using this data it’s fairly easily to work out the longest road name in different areas.
Note that I’m only counting characters in the actual name, not including the suffix (i.e. ‘road’, ‘street’, ‘highway’, etc.).
If we’re not limiting ourselves in what’s considered a ‘road’ for our purposes, then the title for the longest road name goes to the Selby Conservation Northern Fire Access Track at 39 characters.
If we slightly tighten the criteria to only include public roads, then the Portsea Ocean Beach Access Upper Road in Portsea wins out at 32 characters.
If we exclude access roads and tracks, then there are two in equal first with 27 characters. The Kangaroo Ground – Wattle Glen Road and Mount Disappointment Forest Drive.
The top eight with these criteria are:
| Road name | Number of characters |
|---|---|
| Kangaroo Ground – Wattle Glen Road | 27 |
| Mount Disappointment Forest Drive | 27 |
| Kangaroo Ground – St Andrews Road | 26 |
| Kangaroo Ground – Warrandyte Road | 26 |
| Beaconsfield – Nar Nar Goon Road | 25 |
| Cottles Bridge – Strathewen Road | 25 |
| Hurstbridge – Arthurs Creek Road | 25 |
| Old Toolangi – Dixons Creek Road | 25 |
Finally, if we limit ourselves to the longest single word in any road name, then Heidelberg – Warrandyte Road wins out at 21 characters in a single word (a hyphen technically makes it one word, and we love compound words in Australian English…)
But if we exclude hyphens, then there are a couple in equal first place with 14 characters each:
| Road name | Suburb |
|---|---|
| Thistlethwaite Street | South Melbourne |
| Sustainability Street | (Can’t find this one) |
| Northumberland Circuit | Craigieburn |
| Northumberland Drive | Epping |
| Northumberland Road | Pascoe Vale, Sunshine North, Kyneton |
| Northumberland Street | Collingwood, South Melbourne |
| Middlesborough Drive | Craigieburn |
| Mount Disappointment Forest Drive | Upper Plenty (or thereabouts) |
| Corhanwarrabul Close | Rowville |
| Christoforidis Lane | Brunswick |
| Administration Road | Clayton |
You can download and explore the data yourself on the Victorian Government data portal here.
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Is Sustainability Street a real street. Or just this mob? https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/sustainability-s-t-reet
[…] already covered the longest road names in Victoria, so let’s go to the other end of the scale and look at the shortest […]
A little late, but I found another 27 letter long road name
It’s called ‘Langi Ghiran Picnic Ground Road’, in a small locality called Dobie (just east of Ararat).