The road less travelled
BITING DOWN ON A flickering torch, with a dust-encrusted clay tobacco pipe in one hand and his camera in the other, Thomas Wielecki hauls himself up through a trapdoor at the historic Berrima Vault House. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you told me we were going to drive the old Hume from Sydney to Melbourne,” the photographer says, as he plucks cobwebs from his hair.
After leaving Sydney this morning, the first couple of hours of our road trip unfolded like clockwork. We stopped to admire the exquisite workmanship of the heritage-listed Lansdowne Bridge near Fairfield, in south-western Sydney. Opened in 1836, the bridge features a sandstone arch with the largest span of any surviving masonry bridge in Australia. We then checked out the white concrete mileposts in the main street of Camden – relics from the time when the Hume Highway ran through the centre of town – and successfully negotiated the tortuous climb over the Razorback Range, near Picton.
But after arriving in the historic hamlet of Berrima, we discover that when travelling the old Hume you need to expect the unexpected. Unlike the monotonous drive along the modern Hume Highway – which, since 2013, incorporates the Hume Freeway and Hume Motorway, and bypasses every town between Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne – exploring the old Hume is like launching into a choose-your-own-adventure story, especially if you’re willing to scratch the surface.
That’s exactly what we do at the Berrima Vault House. Built in 1844 as the Taylor’s Crown Inn, the landmark was recently transformed into an elegantly appointed country
