Chapter 32

THE EPIC OF THE HIGHWAY

IT was on October 17, in the year 1824, that Hamilton Hume and his companions set out on the expedition that, more than any other, gave colour to Australian history. Hume was a pioneer of pioneers. He was the first of the overlanders. When he left Sydney to penetrate an empty continent, a new day dawned. Until then, Australia was less a land than a locality. Hume’s name will always fall musically on Australian ears. He was not only an Australian explorer; he was an Australian. In the nature of the case, most of our pathfinders were men who had come from the Homeland: Hume was a native. As a small boy, he displayed an extraordinary genius for discovering a way through vast and trackless solitudes. He and his brother would be swallowed up in the virgin forest for weeks at a time, and he was still in his teens when he achieved his first notable triumph. Indeed, he was only twenty-six when he embarked upon the enterprise that has cast a lustre about his honoured name.

Endowed with that uncanny vision of the years-to-be which constitutes itself the spiritual equipment of a pioneer, Hume foresaw the day when Sydney and Melbourne would be the two great centres of Australian life. And, although Sydney was merely a hamlet, whilst Melbourne had not yet twitched in the protoplasm of historical evolution, he made it his ambition to carve a road through the jungle from the site of the one city to the site of the other. Begging permission to join the expedition, Hovell, an old sea captain, argued that, in scaling precipices and crossing flooded gorges, his nautical experience would come in handy. The event vindicated his contention. They took with them half a dozen convicts whose liberty was to be the reward of their success. A few horses and bullocks were carefully selected to haul the paraphernalia through hundreds of miles of unpenetrated wilderness. From that terrible trip not a bullock returned.

After two days they found their progress challenged by a river in tumultuous flood. Hume set his men to work to build boats, but the effort was a dismal failure. A more audacious experiment was tried. Removing the wheels from fishing line in his teeth, Boyd then swam the river. Cords were soon pulled across and ropes secured to both banks. Like a punt, the waterproof waggon was then drawn backwards and forwards, until it had conveyed the entire expedition, with all its baggage and belongings, across the swollen stream. It was on a bright November day that Hume made his most notable discovery. He invariably marched some distance ahead of the party. On that memorable morning the others noticed him, on a hilltop, exhibiting evident signs of excitement. He had seen, he said, the finest river on which his eyes had ever rested. They named it the Hume, although it afterwards came to be known as the Murray.

It was not all romance, however. As time passed, and difficulties multiplied, the subordinates became restless, if not actually mutinous. Hovel 1 was for returning. The discontent became so general that Hume was compelled to promise that if, from the summit of a peak then visible, the ocean to the south was not to be seen,-he would turn back. As a matter of fact, the sea is often discernible from that particular point; but, as luck would have it, it was not visible that day. They grimly named the hill Mt. Disappointment, and sorrowfully commenced the descent. Not to be thwarted, however, Hume pointed out another mountain-now named Macedon-and, almost with tears, begged his followers to try it. They grumblingly agreed, and climbing the trees that crowned the second eminence, clearly beheld the sea!

The real sensation was, however, still to come. Hume announced that, although they had carefully blazed the trail by which they had come, he did not propose to follow the same path on his return. Everybody was dumbfounded. Hovell bluntly averred that Hume was mad. But the result amply justified the young leader’s amazing decision. For, whereas the outward journey occupied two months, they returned by the new route in exactly half that time. And when, later on, the surveyors set to work to peg out a track for road and railways between Sydney and Melbourne, they could improve only in matters of minor detail on Hume’s return route.

Hume’s adventure richly deserves to be cherished in ever- lasting remembrance. Viewed in the cold perspective of an atlas, the shapeless lines that run like stray threads across the map-the lines that indicate the tortuous windings of our arterial highroads-look as prosaic as a proposition in Euclid. Yet those same Australian roads may one day move a laureate to an epic flight. For, properly appreciated, a road is a sacred place-one of the most sacred of all sacred places. And, for those who have eyes to see it, there stands, in the middle of every dusty road, an altar; and on that altar there has been offered a wondrous hecatomb of noble victims, a wealthy holocaust of sacrificial blood. The deaths of men like Burke and Wills and Grey and Poole, and Kennedy and Leichhardt and Baxter have imparted to every Australian highway a solemn sanctity. In the closing sentences of his immortal allegory, Bunyan stresses the fact that only those pilgrims who recognized the sublime significance of the Cross beside the road attained at last to the Celestial City. There is a sense in which the same is true of every road. They have all been hallowed by sacrifice; the feet of those who tramp along them are pressing consecrated ground. From the dust of the road those who have ears to hear may hear the glorious ghosts of the pioneers singing their deathless songs.

By Dr. F. W. Boreham

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