Heavy Haulage Aura & Caloundra South

The Aura and Caloundra South growth corridor

Aura (also known as Caloundra South) is a master-planned community being developed in stages over many years, with new suburbs, schools, town centres and infrastructure rolling out as the population grows. The scale of the earthworks and civil construction required to prepare each stage generates one of the heaviest concentrations of earthmoving plant transport demand on the Sunshine Coast.

Palmview, immediately north of the Aura corridor, is another active growth area with its own pipeline of civil works and residential construction. Together, the two corridors form a continuous band of development activity along the Bruce Highway south of Caloundra, with heavy vehicle movements running through the area on a daily basis.

Typical loads for the Aura corridor

Earthmoving plant dominates the load profile for the Aura and Caloundra South corridor. Excavators, dozers, graders, rollers, articulated and rigid dump trucks, water carts and scrapers all move to and from the active earthworks as stages progress. The size of the plant ranges from mid-size machines for detailed earthworks to large over-mass equipment for bulk cut-to-fill operations.

As the corridor moves from earthworks into residential and commercial construction, structural steel, precast panels and concrete infrastructure components for homes, schools and town centres also become regular movements. The volume of plant and materials moving through the corridor means scheduling and coordination are critical to keeping the construction front supplied.

Route access via Caloundra Road and the Bruce Highway

The Aura and Caloundra South corridor connects to the Bruce Highway via Caloundra Road and the Bells Creek interchange, which provide the main heavy vehicle routes in and out of the area. The highway provides access north to the Sunshine Coast industrial hubs and south to Caboolture and Brisbane. Oversize movements through the corridor are planned around the high traffic volumes on Caloundra Road and the Bruce Highway, with some loads restricted to off-peak or night travel windows, particularly during holiday periods when Coast traffic peaks.