[3] The section between Bulli Tops and Gwynneville was known as Mount Ousley Road, and was first built as a defence route and later upgraded to dual carriageway standards.

Despite the current decline of the local steel industry, emergence of Wollongong as a commuter city of Sydney has kept the motorway busy.

It continues downhill, avoiding the steep Bulli Pass, and bypasses Wollongong CBD, through Gwynneville and continues for 30 kilometres (19 mi), bypassing the suburbs of Yallah and Albion Park Rail, reaching the interchange with Illawarra Highway (Terry Street) at Albion Park, before terminating with the existing alignment of Princes Highway at an interchange in Oak Flats.

To complement the tollway, the dual carriageways of Princes Highway from Waterfall north to Loftus and the Sutherland bypass were constructed and opened to traffic on 16 September 1975.

[4] The section between Bulli Tops and Gwynneville was previously named as part of Mount Ousley Road,[8] and is still often referred to as such.

Following completion of the Mount Ousley-Gwynneville connector, Southern Freeway subsumed a section of the Northern Distributor south of Gwynneville to West Wollongong, and continued making its way southward, then with the extension from West Wollongong to The Avenue at Figtree opening in 1967, and then from Five Islands Road to Northcliffe Drive in 1973 (albeit as a single carriageway, with duplication finished in 1975).

[16] At the southern end, Princes Motorway was extended to Oak Flats via a 9.8 km bypass of Albion Park Rail.

The land reservation tract currently passes through the suburbs of Loftus, Kirrawee, Gymea, Miranda, Taren Point, Sandringham, Sans Souci, Ramsgate, Monterey, Kogarah, Brighton-Le-Sands, Rockdale, Banksia, Arncliffe, Kyeemagh and Tempe.

[28] Of the proposed extension, only the six-lane Captain Cook Bridge and a short connecting section of Taren Point Road to the south have been built.

Establishment of the bridge section of the F6 extension began in 1962, expedited to replace the ferry service that had operated from Taren Point to Sans Souci since 1916.

[30] Then, in August 1977, premier Neville Wran cancelled the inner section of the F6 link, which at the time had an estimated construction cost of $96 million.

[29] At the same time, Wran announced that the inner section reservation would be sold off and the proposed extension would instead terminate at St Peters, a medium density industrial suburb.