Newcastle + Lake Macquarie A kept record · entries to 3 July 2026
The Hunter Ledger

News · Roads · Hunter-wide

The M1 extension to Raymond Terrace will open in late 2026, more than a year early

The northern half of the Hunter’s biggest road project is finished. Once the Black Hill to Tomago section is completed later this year, the whole 15 km motorway opens, and with it goes the Hexham bottleneck that nearly 25,000 vehicles push through on an ordinary day.

The Hunter Ledger · 3 July 2026 · every claim below links to its source

The M1 Pacific Motorway extension to Raymond Terrace is now expected to open to traffic in late 2026, more than a year earlier than the 2028 date the project previously carried, according to a joint federal and state announcement in April. The trigger: the project’s 5 km northern section, the Heatherbrae Bypass, is complete, including the Raymond Terrace interchange, the Masonite Road overpass and a bridge over Windeyers Creek.

The finished bypass now waits on the 10 km southern section from Black Hill to Tomago, due to be completed later this year. The two open together as one motorway.

Where the project is up to

Schematic, not to scale. Status as announced 8 April 2026.

to Pacific Highway north Raymond Terrace Heatherbrae Tomago Black Hill Northern section · 5 km · COMPLETE Heatherbrae Bypass, Raymond Terrace interchange, Masonite Rd overpass, Windeyers Creek bridge Southern section · 10 km · in progress Black Hill to Tomago, due later this year. The full motorway opens once it is done. to M1 / Sydney
Sections and status as described in the joint ministerial release; we have drawn the route as a straight line, not real geometry.

What it costs and who pays

The M1 extension and the companion Hexham Straight widening are jointly funded at $2.24 billion: $1.792 billion federal and $448 million from the NSW Government. Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King called it “one of the largest infrastructure projects in the Hunter’s history” and noted nearly 25,000 vehicles use the existing road on a normal day, with numbers swelling in school holidays.

What happens after opening

Opening is not the end of the work. Contractors will stay on site to monitor how the new road settles under highway traffic, finish landscaping and do targeted maintenance: up to two years on the southern section and one year on the northern section, per the same release.

For the people who drive it, the plainest summary came from the Member for Newcastle, Sharon Claydon: “Novocastrians know better than anyone how frustrating the bottlenecks around Hexham and Heatherbrae can be.”

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