Like so many things in the rural landscape, the Cullerin Road would appear to most like just a twisty if somewhat neglected rural road. The clues now that it has some history are the sporadic and faded signage as it winds its way around the main north-south rail link, showing it would have been a route to Goulburn and Yass at some time.
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As a visitor from another country or another state in Australia, unless you had driven the route in its heyday for some reason, there are no real pointers to its turbulent and iconic past. This fate was sealed when part of the bypassing process was to rename the road and remove all signage.
It is such an asset going to waste. It has so many dimensions based on rail, road, horse drawn coach, trucking, wool, policing, community, exploration and settlement history that it can take quite some observation and consideration to take it all in.
With the passing of Frank Burke, the driving force behind 'Old Hume Highway 31' and the subsequent hiatus the family has chosen due to this untimely and traumatic event, it is easy to 'lose the faith' as it were.
But all the facets still remain. The road so favored by cyclists for racing, used by trainspotters for capturing vistas of freight and passenger rail heading north and south and endearing as an alternate to the Hume Highway speed limit sprint wears its past like a faded tunic.
When will and by whom will Frank's vision of the iconic route 'Old Hume Highway 31' be fully realized complete with signage and the status it deserves in our countries short but fertile past.
It is easy to dismiss it as something we should forget as a chapter closed but to truly fair well its role is to pay homage to its contribution.
This is something more than just a passing lament but rather something that we should proudly echo against the backdrop of the perhaps now defunct Route 66 as a sign of the growth pains and endeavor by all parts of our young nation to come to grips with the challenges of the sheer vastness of this island land and its sparse population has provided not evident in similar sized domains.
We are a land mass to match continental North America but the distances between capital cities would define the length of an European Nation.
To me, this is not necessarily a question for a shire or a state government but rather for a country. Why can't we or won't we place the Cullerin Road and the "old Hume Highway" on the pedestals they surely deserves and ensure there iconic status.
Bernie Boyce
Gunning
