That’s a significant dogleg and underlines something that applied when almost every stream was crossed by a narrow low level bridge where northbound traffic was obliged to give way to vehicles pointed towards the state capital.
At that stage, the highway didn’t follow the shortest distance (or anything close to it) between two points. There was an even more extreme example just south of Calen, where northbound traffic made a sharpish right hand turn at Kolijo, onto what’s still labelled Old Bowen Road on my iPad National Geographic Atlas, crossing One Mile Creek and doglegging back to Calen.
At either end of the diversion, you could see the spot where you diverted just over there on the other side of the creek, a matter of a hundred yards or so (well, maybe two hundred) after a round route a couple of miles long that took you over yet another low level narrow bridge.
It wasn’t long before the present bridge that whisks the driver straight past the servo at Kolijo to the strawberry stall at Calen went in because I can’t remember doing that dogleg more than once or twice.
No, you could do the flood proofing further north by skirting around the foothills of the coast range, and you are, after all, right there as you do the downhill run on the Cardwell Range, but you’d miss the numerous small cane growing townships between Euramo and Innisfail that mightn’t be right on the highway, complain about being cut off every year, but would be even less impressed by any suggestion they might have to take a less direct route north or south if they wanted all year round high and dry roadways.
Heading towards the uplands, of course, would raise an extra objection, since you’d be heading into remnant rainforest and National Park territory, which, in turn, would rouse the ire of the Conservationist lobby.
No, having spent all that money replacing the low level bridges and realigning the route we’ll probably be calling for more overtaking lanes along the flood proofed existing highway rather than spending all that money taking the thing along a line that wouldn’t be quite as convenient as the one it follows now.
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