The road in question is the 873km of highway between Sydney and Melbourne known as the Hume. The story is about the road and the people who made it, whether as builders or travellers. It is a story of love and death, goodness and folly, and the uphill and downhill of the human journey.
Bypass is in many ways a sequel to Michael’s Things You Get For Free, which recounted his adventures on a long promised trip to Europe with his mother and, at the same time, poignantly reflected on the making and unmaking of his life as a Jesuit and a priest. In Bypass he rides an ordinary bicycle from Sydney to Melbourne. He wants to explore the Hume slowly. He encounters all kinds of people on the way, and he threads their story into the story of the road. In particular, he is joined by a dancer with a superior bike, and a more intimate journey in life begins.
The busiest highway in Australia may seem a very exposed location for such a private story, but the polarities of the public and the personal gives the book its direction. The public detail ranges from Hume and Hovell’s pioneering overland journey to the proposals for the final bypass around Albury. The personal details include the confessions of truck drivers, café proprietors, curators, publicans, burger flippers, mystics, long-distance runners, poets, prisoners, priests, farmers, ghosts, Olympians, and anybody else Michael meets on the way. He has a gift for engaging people and an ear for the particular turn of phrase that captures the uniqueness of each spirit.
The story of the road is also a short history of Australia. Aboriginal people, explorers, convicts, pioneers, bushrangers, war heroes and writers are all brought to life. Places associated with them are visited, and people who knew them are engaged. Various monuments along the way are considered, from Anthony Hordern’s tree to the Dog on the Tuckerbox, with many war memorials in between. Informal and less obvious memorials are also duly noted, particularly those marking the untimely death of loved ones on the road. Michael observes, ‘The Hume hides evidence of many such rituals.’ He typically takes time to telephone a number left beside one such memorial to assure a grieving family that their monument is not neglected.
There is some irony in the fact that I read this book while flying from Melbourne to Sydney and back,