Road of inspirations takes a new path

Holbrook’s bypass, the final of the 49 bypasses on the 808 kilometre road from Sydney to Melbourne, was officially opened yesterday, 37 years after it was first proposed.

Ms Gillard spoke to a crowd of about 1500 on the bypass yesterday afternoon and said that in the year it was proposed, there was almost 2500 crashes and 17 deaths on the NSW section of the highway.

“With dual carriageway the length of the highway, crashes are now in the low hundreds. Fatalities this year are in the single digits. I’m determined we keep saving lives,” Ms Gillard said.

She said the Hume was a road that transformed the landscape, an inspiration for songs and stories.

“We all have our memories of the Hume; the shimmer of a hot road ahead that signals a summer holiday has begun, the first sight of the city, suburb or town that lets us know we are almost home. That won’t change,” she said.

“We just need to remember to get off the highway once in a while, taking a break here at Holbrook or Goulburn or Wangaratta.”

Most of the onlookers were locals — from Holbrook to Henty, Wodonga to Wagga.

Some were Holbrook traders, worried a bypass would rip business from their town.

Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Anthony Albanese told them the 48 towns before them had become “more attractive” places to stop.

“It really will return Holbrook to you, where kids can safely ride their bikes and cross the street without having to have concern about those big trucks thundering through,” Mr Albanese said.

Debbie Barker, one of 1500 people who walked the nine kilometre bypass, is from Woomargama, a village 15 kilometres away that was bypassed in 2011.

She spoke of the tenuous single dotted line that once separated cars travelling in opposite directions.

It was never enough to stop terrible head-on crashes.

“It’s going to make it really safe,” she said.

A chance to see the Prime Minister also drew Ms Barker out onto the road.

“It might be her last visit,” she said.

Ms Gillard spent half an hour after her speech shaking hands with a crowd who had climbed over the barrier separating the dual lanes.

There would be no words to the hovering media, with a press conference at Holbrook cancelled after the death of an Australian soldier.

She was whisked into her car, driven away down the brand new south-bound lanes, yet to be marked with white lines, bitumen uncompleted in places and about a month off from opening to cars.

Standing on the bypass he knows too well was Gundagai’s Barry Herring, who at 69 was the oldest person who worked on the Holbrook bypass.

He’s also probably the longest-serving of the 130,000 people the Hume employed, having started working on the duplication at aged 16.

Ms Gillard had personally recognised his work in her speech.

“It’s a big thrill, the biggest thrill I’ve had in my life,” Mr Herring said.