The best motorcycle roads in NSW, ranked by what you actually want

New South Wales has the best concentration of riding roads in Australia and, not coincidentally, the most enforcement. Both facts should shape how you plan a day out.

The Old Pacific Highway

The Old Road — roughly 17 kilometres and 36 corners between the Hawkesbury and the Central Coast, bypassed decades ago by the freeway and adopted by riders ever since.

It is a good road: consistent radius corners, decent surface, and the kind of rhythm that flatters a rider. It is also:

• The most heavily enforced motorcycle road in the country. Reduced limits, regular patrols, and a long history of targeted operations.
• Busy with riders on weekends, which brings its own hazards.
• Home to the best café stops in Sydney motorcycling — Pie in the Sky at the top and Road Warriors and the Central Coast options at the other end.

Treat it as a social ride with corners, get there early, and enjoy the breakfast. The riders who treat it as a racetrack are the reason the enforcement exists.

The Putty Road

The classic Sydney day ride: about 160 kilometres from Windsor up to Singleton, through Colo and the long empty middle around Howes Valley.

What makes it good: sustained, varied riding — fast open sweepers, tighter sections through the ranges, and long stretches with nothing but bush.

What catches people out:

• Fuel. The middle is genuinely empty. Fill at Windsor or Colo, and do not assume something will be open at Howes Valley. See the fuel planning guide.
• Wildlife, particularly at each end of the day.
• Surface variation — it changes a lot along its length, and cold tyres plus an unfamiliar surface early on is a common combination in the incident reports.
• Distance from help. Sections have poor mobile coverage. It is the road on this list where telling someone your plan matters most.

The Oxley Highway

If you ask Australian riders to name one road, a lot of them say the Oxley — the section between Wauchope and Walcha, climbing off the coastal plain up onto the New England tableland.

Long, sustained, well-surfaced mountain riding with a corner count that makes the Black Spur look like a warm-up. It is a long way from Sydney, and it should be a weekend rather than a day: ride up the coast, stay in Wauchope or Walcha, do the road properly with fresh concentration.

Enforcement here is real too, and there is a long history of tension between riders and locals. Ride like a guest.

South and west: the quieter half

Sydney riders default north. The southern and western options are less crowded and just as good.

Kangaroo Valley and Robertson. The descent into Kangaroo Valley, the roads around Fitzroy Falls, and the run out through Robertson give you a full day of excellent riding with much less pressure. The escarpment roads down toward the coast are the highlights.

The Southern Highlands. Rolling, fast, quiet, and easy to link into a loop. Good for a day where the point is covering ground pleasantly rather than attacking corners.

Oberon and the Jenolan area. West over the Blue Mountains and out the back. Colder, higher, emptier, and a genuinely different feel from the coastal roads.

Wollombi. The roads around Wollombi and up through the vineyards make a fine alternative to the Putty for a shorter day, with better food at the end.

The northern rivers

If you are going further north, the roads inland from Byron and Lismore — up toward Nimbin, Kyogle and the border ranges — are superb and much less ridden than the coastal run. Tighter, greener, and with a wet-season caveat: after rain, expect debris and slick patches under the canopy.

Planning a NSW day

Enforcement is a planning input, not a complaint. The famous roads are watched. Build a route that includes them without depending on them for entertainment, and put the enjoyable riding on the roads in between.

Fuel gaps are real once you are off the coastal strip. The Putty and the roads west of the Divide both have long empty stretches.

Coverage is patchy in the valleys and the ranges. Plan the route before you leave rather than expecting to plan on the road.

Wildlife at dawn and dusk across all of it. Kangaroos in particular on the western and northern roads.

When you have ridden them all

Sydney riders reach a point where the answer to “where shall we go?” is one of four roads, all of them shared with a hundred other riders on any decent Sunday.

NSW has an enormous network of quiet sealed back roads — the Hunter’s back way, the roads west of the Southern Highlands, the tableland runs between the New England towns — that never make lists like this one because they have no reputation. Plenty of them are better than the famous options simply by virtue of being empty.

Record your rides, let your map fill in, then plan a route that avoids what you have already done. The unfamiliar road is usually the better ride, even when it is objectively a slightly lesser road, because you do not know what is over the next crest.