Author(s): Michael McGirr

History

"All the dirt on the Hume Highway" (Shane Maloney)The Hume Highway runs from Sydney to Melbourne. Like all the great roads of the world, it is longer than it is wide. Flabby, unfit and forty, Michael McGirr decided to ride a pushbike from one end to the other. For most of his life, he had regarded the Hume as an obstacle to negotiate as quickly as possible. But Michael was discovering that middle age takes longer to do things. There's a good side to this: on a slow ride to Melbourne, Michael was overtaken by a strange cast of fellow travellers. He also had a chance to ponder the history of Australia's major thoroughfare, a road which winds through the story of bushrangers and bus drivers, politicians and poets, truckies and refugees. The Hume is neither our legendary coastline, nor the mysterious outback. It is the road most travelled, a place so common that few stop to hear the stories it carries. In McGirr's hands, however, the road is an occasion for both insight and comedy... And maybe even a fine romance."Give a man a road and he has a library" (Mary Gilmore)