'A terrible danger': the dicey history of Bulli Pass

In a letter to the Mercury in 1857, the oddly named "Scrutator" gave a vivid description of the pass.

"The mountain track is, in some places, about nine inches wide. The ascent is fearfully steep, and the path exceedingly dangerous - so much so that in the event of a horse stepping off it, instant destruction inevitably awaits him as he would be plunged into a frightful gorge hundreds of feet deep," he wrote.

Some might say, aside from the nine-inch wide track (22 centimetres in our money), not a whole lot has changed.

The route up the mountain was originally known as Westmacott's Pass, after the man who found it in 1844.

It largely followed the current path, with one eye-opening exception; where the road up heads left towards the hairpin, Robert Westmacott decided to just go straight up the mountainside.

A few years later Benjamin Rixon discovered a new pass over the escarpment at Woonona - one end of it is marked by what is now Rixon's Pass Road in that suburb.

It was cleared to make a road in 1848, but Bulli residents didn't like it because it meant they had to travel south to go north - which would have added considerable time in the era of horse travel.

So they pushed for their own route - Bulli Pass - which was built in 1867; the Mercury of that year reported blasting being heard throughout Bulli as the road was widened.

As befits Bulli Pass, it didn't take long for a serious accident to occur. In December 1877, a coach was travelling downhill when the brake failed; the horses took fright and galloped down the road.

The horses couldn't navigate the hairpin - which was already known as "the elbow" - and the coach flipped and rolled off the road.

Among the passengers was a baby and a little girl; the only two to miraculously emerge unscathed. But the reputation of the pass didn't, for another passenger was Parramatta MP Hugh Taylor, who later chose to criticise the pass in print.

"The Bulli Mountain Pass is simply in the present condition a terrible danger," he wrote in a letter published in numerous newspapers. "The main road skirts the edge of a cliff and a few feet from where the coach passes there is a perpendicular fall of fully 200 feet, while a little further on the route is scarcely less dangerous."

He then requested the government do something to make the road safer - again, some might say not much has changed.

Others in the late 1800s felt the government should take control of the land around the area because "nothing is half so attractive as is the view from the Bulli Pass" and it would be terrible if the "ever encroaching hand of man changed the nature of the whole scene".

The flora may have been wonderful, but the fauna wasn't always as nice. In 1896 a mad bull managed to escape from its paddock and charge a group of pedestrians (yes, people used to walk along Bulli Pass). They leapt over a fence and landed in blackberry bushes while the bull contented itself with overturning a buggy.

In 1926, the pass got a coating of bitumen, which made it very appealing for car makers to stage a publicity stunt.

For the following five or six years, there were news reports of various cars tackling Bulli Pass in top gear. Though they didn't power up the pass; their average speed was around 30km/h.

Accidents continued to take place on the pass - 1952 seemed to be a typical year.

In February, the hairpin was covered with four tonnes of tuna when a truck transporting them to a cannery on the South Coast overturned. Four hours later another truck arrived and the fish was reloaded - and hopefully washed before being canned.

Just a month later, a three-tonne truck left the road and rolled 50 metres down the mountainside. The driver hit a stone that had been left on the road, lost control and went through the safety fence and over the cliff.

The driver, Bernard Fox, was rescued by police and ambulance officers who had to rappel down the mountainside to get him in an incident that made the newspapers around the state.

Just a week later it happened again. Reg Butcher was driving a load of bricks down the pass, when his truck jumped out of gear and the brakes failed.

Butcher managed to jump from the truck, and then watch it crash through the safety barriers and tumble down the mountain.

Then, a month later, it happened again. Arthur Davies was carrying a load of ore when the transmission snapped. He jumped free of the truck before it left the road, ending up a complete write-off.

Guess what happened in June 1952. Yep, yet another truck went over the edge. When his tyre blew out at the top of the pass, Wilfred Twiggs leapt out. The truck crashed off the road and burst into flames.

In November, a truck driver and passenger were thrown through the windscreen when the driver lost control coming down the pass below the hairpin. Percival Benson, the driver, died in hospital the following day.

"I have always maintained that Bulli Pass is a dangerous section of road," wrote police Sergeant LK Adams in the South Coast Times, "particularly where motor vehicles which are not thoroughly sound so far as mechanism and brakes are concerned are driven on it."

The sergeant was one of those in support of banning trucks from the pass, instead sending them down Mt Ousley Road.

That would happen - eventually. Though not before more tragedies did.

Truck driver Ivan Mranivich died in September 1963 when his runaway truck crashed into a house on Bulli Pass, knocking it 60 centimetres off its foundations.

In June 1968, three people died when another semi-trailer ploughed into a house. "We are living in fear of our lives at the sound of every squeak of brakes," said one resident of Bulli Pass.

Wollongong Mayor Tony Bevan urged the government to ban heavy vehicles from the pass, though the surprise finding of a coroner investigating the deaths delayed that decision.

Coroner Sherley recommended the Department of Main Roads do nothing more than build two extra safety ramps - one of those would be placed at the base of the pass, adjacent to the Lawrence Hargrave Drive intersection.

He said the risk of runaway trucks was "almost negligible"; trucks on the pass were safe, as long as they were in good condition, had proper equipment and were driven carefully.

The decision made Bulli Pass Protest Association Chair Kevin Marshall very unhappy.

"I had hoped that the coroner might have seen fit to recommend that the authorities introduce a compulsory low gear law for heavy vehicles on the pass and also a speed limit of 10 miles per hour," Mr Marshall said.

It took two more deaths on the pass before the government decided to built the concrete divider down the middle of the road.

In October 1984, John Stacey and Harry Scholten were repairing a car in the driveway of a Bulli Pass home when they were hit and killed by a runaway station wagon.

The next day, Roads Minister Laurie Brereton took a helicopter down to Bulli - landing on the safety ramp at the bottom - to tell residents he had demanded a design for jersey barriers be on his desk within seven days.

"You have my undertaking I will do everything in my power to improve safety conditions on Bulli Pass," Mr Brereton said to the residents. "You only have to stand here and smell the brakes of cars and trucks going down the pass to know what a difficult road it is."

A barrier would also be installed on the Pass Avenue corner to protect homes.

While residents at the time complained barriers would make it harder for them to drive in and out of their homes, it has reduced the seriousness of accidents.

One case in point was the 2019 incident where a truck clipped several power poles, overturned and caught alight.

While the truck did roll over the concrete barrier and overturned on the other side of the road, the barrier did arrest the truck's speed and stop it from driving straight into nearby homes.

In recent times, the changes on the pass have included the installation of rockfall fencing in two stages in 2016 and 2017, which saw the closure of the pass for a month at a time.

It did the job, stopping rocks from hitting cars driving along the road.

At present, there is slope stabilisation work taking place on the pass to reduce the risk of the road surface falling away or being covered with debris.

Perhaps the biggest safety measure in recent times is the construction of the Princes Highway flyover at the base of the pass.

Though the northern suburbs had to wait a long time for it to happen. Transport Minister Carl Scully promised the flyover in 2003 during the election campaign - saying work would start in the next term of government if Labor won.

Labor won, but construction didn't start. A plan for the bridge was released in late 2006 and Roads and Maritime Services began acquiring properties, including the NRMA service station on the Lawrence Hargrave Drive corner.

In 2008, Minister for the Illawarra David Campbell promised construction would start the following year, adding that it was running "a bit later than I would have liked".

The flyover, which cost $31 million, was finally opened to traffic in mid-2010.

There is sure to be more money spent on the pass in the future too; as Transport for NSW is dealing with what started out as a track for a horse and cart.

If they were building an escarpment crossing at Bulli today, they wouldn't build something like Bulli Pass. But the pass is what we've got and so they have to maintain it as best they can - because to build an entirely new route would be a very, very expensive exercise.