ROADS TO EROSION

Many readers will remember the dangerous goat track between Melbourne and Sydney which was much of the Hume Highway well into the 1990s.

A lot of it was single carriageway with the occasional passing lanes, and it was a bloodbath In 1989, 16 people died in eight crashes involving trucks between Mittagong and Gundagai on one stretch in New South Wales alone. Who could forget the old Hume through the infamous Cullerin Range along there?

It might have taken two decades longer than both Coalition and Labor Prime Ministers promised, but these days the Hume is a completely divided dual-lane carriageway and fatalities are way down. It’s a similar story on the long-awaited, nearly re-built Pacific between Sydney and Brisbane. There are still plenty of run-offs to the side, and trucks sometimes come through the middle, but head-ons are now rare.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that