Bypass

 ** Views, Values and Contrasts **

Michael McGirr's Bypass: The Story of a Road
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.

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 * Close Analysis #1 - due Monday 23/3/09

Extract from VCAA -** McGirr, Michael, // Bypass: The Story of a Road //, Pan Macmillan, 2005 (A) //In late 2001, Michael McGirr, newly-departed from the Jesuit priesthood, set off to ride a bicycle the length of the Hume Highway from Sydney to Melbourne. It is a journey of highway, byway and freeway, tracing the life of the road in its modern, fast-paced incarnation and discovering some of the out of the way haunts that re fl ect its history. Although readily accessible to a range of readers, this book defi es narrow categorization: part travelogue, part historical anecdote, part reflection and social commentary and part the story of a developing love relationship, it changes gear as often as the bicycle. It is written with affection, wry humour and insight into contemporary Australian life. //