Six roads meet at the heart of Lara: Station Lake Road, Patullos Road, Forest Road North, Forest Road South, Kees Road and Flinders Avenue. For as long as anyone can remember, they've met at a single-lane roundabout that locals simply call Six Ways — a name that does more work in a sentence than any street sign.
01 / Why it's called that
The name is literal. Count the approaches and you get six. It's the kind of nickname that only survives in a town small enough for everyone to know it and old enough for it to have stuck — the sort of thing that appears in no council document but in every conversation about how to get to the bakery, the station, the footy, or the primary school.
Alongside it sits the Pioneers' Memorial Cairn, the stone monument on the Station Lake Road corner honouring Lara's early settlers. Between them, the roundabout and the cairn are about as close as Lara gets to a town square.
02 / Why it's changing
Because Lara has outgrown it. Long considered a safety concern by locals, the intersection has been the subject of calls for improvement for years. A single-lane roundabout that handled a town of eight thousand doesn't handle a town heading past twenty thousand, with the estates to the west and north pouring morning traffic through the middle of it, and school and station pedestrians trying to cross six approaches with no signals.
Traffic lights were identified as the preferred solution following technical studies and feedback received at community drop-in sessions held in 2018-2019. The Victorian Government has invested $16 million to improve safety, capacity and traffic flow at the Lara Six Ways intersection.
03 / The timeline
Figure 01 · Eight years, so far
From drop-in sessions to shovels.
- 2018–2019
Community drop-in sessions and technical studies. Traffic lights emerge as the preferred option over a larger roundabout.
- 2022Nov
The $16 million project, pledged ahead of the 2022 state election — a commitment made in the campaign, then carried into government.
- 2025Jun–Jul
Preliminary design and project boundary published. Engage Victoria survey opens; "It's important that local voices are heard during [the] planning process, so I encourage everyone to have their say in the online survey, which is open until July 27," Ms George said.
- 2025late
Planning work for the intersection upgrade is expected to be complete in 2025. Site investigations — utilities, ground conditions — under way.
- 2026now
Detailed design and construction approach being finalised. Construction timelines will be known once planning is further progressed. No start date has been published.
- ?TBC
Construction. Relocation of the cairn and public toilets. Roundabout removed; signals switched on.
Eight years from first consultation to a still-unconfirmed construction date. That isn't unusual for a Victorian intersection project — but it is a long time for a town that was told the fix was coming.
04 / What's actually being built
Figure 02 · The changes, plainly
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Roundabout | the existing single lane roundabout at the Six Ways intersection will be replaced with traffic lights |
| Pedestrians | Four signalised crossings around the intersection — the first controlled crossings the corner has ever had |
| Lanes | Additional through and turning lanes on Patullos Road and Station Lake Road; new bike lane; new shared walking and cycling path along Station Lake Road |
| Kees Road | the right turn from Kees Road onto Patullos Road will be removed — left in/out only |
| Flinders Avenue | Right turn from Station Lake Road onto Flinders Avenue removed, and right turn out from Flinders Avenue removed — left in/out only |
| Pioneers' Memorial Cairn | Requires relocation |
| Public toilets | Require relocation |
The turn restrictions are the genuinely contentious part. To add new lanes at the intersection the ability for vehicles to turn right across multiple traffic lanes needs to be restricted. To access Patullos Road westbound from Kees Road, motorists will need to make a U-turn at the new traffic lights or drive west along Patullos Service Road and turn right onto Patullos Road from Benjamin Drive.
05 / The cairn
The item on that list that matters most to the people who've lived here longest isn't a lane or a light. It's the cairn. The Pioneers' Memorial has stood on that corner for decades, and "subject to relocation" is doing a lot of quiet work in the project documents. Where it goes, how it's moved, and whether it stays within sight of the intersection it has always marked are questions the community should be answering — not discovering after the fact.
My position is simple: the cairn should move the shortest possible distance, stay at Six Ways, and the relocation should be done with the Lara & District Historical Society at the table. A memorial to the people who founded the town shouldn't end up in a reserve nobody walks past.
06 / The name
Here's the thing nobody's talking about. When the roundabout goes, the six-way meeting point technically survives — the roads still converge. But the experience of Six Ways, the slow single-lane circle where you nod at whoever's coming the other way, disappears. It becomes a signalised intersection like any other.
The name will hang on for a while. Then a generation of kids will grow up in Lara knowing it only as "the lights near the station", and one day someone will ask their grandmother why the old-timers call it Six Ways, and she'll have to explain what a roundabout was doing there.
Places lose their names the same way they lose their buildings — not all at once, but when the last person who remembers why stops being asked.— David Greenwood OAM
That's not an argument against the upgrade. Lara needs it. It's an argument for doing two cheap, easy things while we still can: keep the name on the signage — "Six Ways" on the new signal gantries and the relocated cairn's plaque costs nothing — and get the historical society's photographs of the roundabout into the Lara library before it's gone.
07 / What I'll be asking
Transport Victoria & the Member for Lara
- A published construction start date — it's been eight years
- A community-agreed location for the cairn, decided before contracts are let
- "Six Ways" retained in the signage and the naming of the intersection
- Safe, temporary pedestrian routes to the station and school throughout construction
City of Greater Geelong
- Local road changes on Kees Road and Flinders Avenue planned alongside the state works, not after
- Historical society supported to document the roundabout before demolition
- Footpath connections from the new crossings into the town centre funded in the same window
