North: We first purchased our home in Byron Bay in 1988 and moved there permanently in 1996 until returning to Sydney in 2000 for business reasons.

I regularly travelled the road between Byron and Sydney and the Pacific Highway in the 1980s-90s was a single lane "fly by the seat of your pants" track.

Last week I returned to Byron Bay for a holiday and, from the Sydney start of the M1 (pictured), the road all the way to Byron bay was superb.

It is mainly a divided two or three-lane highway with 110km/h limit and only Coffs Harbour is still to be bypassed. The work on that last bypass is soon to commence.

Moreover, last Saturday's opening of Sydney's NorthConnex Tunnel adds another significant enhancement for northbound travellers, removing the need to traverse the notorious Pennant Hills Road.

South: Before relocating from Sydney to Bathurst in February 2017, we also investigated moving south to the Jervis Bay area. Again, we were pleasantly impressed with the great improvement with the highways from Sydney to, and well past, Jervis Bay.

Having regularly visited the South Coast by road in the 1960s-70s, the marked difference was actually startling

West, the poor cousin: From 1960-63 we always attended Bathurst on our motorcycles (Norton's) for the Easter Saturday motorcycle GP. From our home bases in Leichhardt/Balmain we would travel via Katoomba along the Great Western Highway, or sometimes the Bell's Line of Road.

Alas, it's the "polar opposite" to the wonderful progress on the northern and southern highways, despite the passage of almost 60 years. The Great Western Highway is basically still the same old road between Sydney and Bathurst.

Certainly, there have been some minor enhancements and "tizz-ups" but little real efficiency and major changes.

This wonderful, particularly productive and rapidly growing Western Plains area (Bathurst, Orange, Cowra, etc) has, irrespective of all the local, state and federal politicians' spin, been treated as a "poor cousin" compared to the other two main routes.

Clearly, the political prioritisation and funding for badly needed highways out here that are equivalent to the north and south compass points out of Sydney has not occurred. Sadly, that's the simple fact of the matter.

It's safe to say politics works on the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" and "high visibility" principles. As such, I respectfully submit that despite Messrs Toole and Gee being in every possible photo-shoot, in reality they have not served the good people of Bathurst at all well.

Both have badly let down their hard-working and deserving constituencies by not obtaining the necessary funds. Those funds are essential to bring Bathurst and the Western Plains up to standards similar to the described northern and southern coastal routes.

Fascination with re-election priorities does not enhance societies - articulate egalitarian hard work coupled with wise highly experienced strategic direction and planning is needed to "produce the goods".

Finally, the constant stream of logging trucks, semis and petrol and LNG tankers passing through Bathurst also needs to be mentioned. That scenario clearly reveals the long-term "asleep at the wheel" result of the Western Plains area's quite self-aggrandising council, state and federal hierarchies.