Port Stephens Cutting Upgrade
Overview
Tamworth Regional Council is working with Transport for NSW to upgrade Nowendoc Road between the Ogunbil and Weabonga Road intersections to improve road safety for all road users. This section of Nowendoc Road is known locally as ‘Port Stephens Cutting’.
The upgrade is expected to include road widening requiring bulk rock excavation, slope stabilisation, retaining walls, extensive stormwater drainage replacement, pavement upgrades as well as improvements to the road surface, signs and line marking and safety barriers.
This project is extremely complex due to the topography and geology at the site, requiring extensive engineering design and planning before a contractor can be engaged to commence construction. Council is working with a specialist geotechnical engineering consultant to undertake extensive site investigations and design.
Project update
As of August 2025, Council has:
• Continued working with the NSW and Australian Governments to finalise the funding arrangement for the major upgrade work.
• Continued working with specialist consultants to prepare engineering designs for the proposed upgrade.
• Prepared a community consultation plan, scheduled to commence once Australian Government funding has been confirmed.
• Continued preparing construction procurement documentation, which is expected to commence with an Expression of Interest (EOI) advertised after Australian Government funding has been confirmed to identify and short-list suitably capable contractors.
• Finalised environmental approvals, including consideration to possible temporary stockpile and construction compound sites. You can view the Review of Environmental Factors (REF) report here
• Continued to liaise with adjacent property owners in relation to direct project impacts.
If you're interested in receiving projects updates, please send your enquiry to trc@tamworth.nsw.gov.au asking to be included in the Port Stephens Cutting email register.
Design Excerpts
Part of the preliminary engineering design is provided for information only, to illustrate the good progress made with this. This design will remain preliminary only and the overall project affordability won’t be accurately known until Council engages with short-listed contractors following the Expression of Interest process.
To view excerpts of the preliminary designs, please click here (PDF 29.9MB).