Surveyor Grimes marked out the track from Hobart to Launceston in 1807, and Governor Macquarie followed the route in 1811 when he visited the colony accompanied by his wife.

Macquarie again visited the colony in 1821, when the road was fit for a carriage, but his journal records many different sections, and it was not until 1831 that the first regular coach service was operated by J. E. Cox.

The first mailman, Robert Taylor, was appointed in 1816, he walked, leaving Hobart and Launceston on alternate Sundays and carrying the mail in a pack.

The route of the highway originally ran between Hobart and Launceston, and passed through the localities which are now known as: Bridgewater, Brighton, Pontville, Mangalore, Bagdad, Dysart, Kempton, Melton Mowbray, Jericho, Oatlands, Antill Ponds, Woodbury, Tunbridge, Ross, Campbell Town, Conara Junction, Cleveland, Epping Forest, Perth, Breadalbane and Kings Meadows.

Now called the Brooker Highway, this completed a grade-separated dual carriageway between Claremont Interchange and Granton in the northern suburbs of Hobart.

The road works involved construction of 1 km of dual carriageway between Glen Dhu Overpass and the Frankland Street/Wellington Street intersection.

[9] Stage 1 of the project was completed in April 2018, including a new grade separated interchange at Breadalbane to bypass the existing roundabout which provides connections with Launceston Airport, Evandale and the old Midland Highway alignment to Youngtown and Kings Meadows.

[10] In 2002, a railway line underpass was constructed near Symmons Plains, south of Perth, to create a grade separated rail crossing on the highway itself.