Pathways

Ever since the beginning of life out of the sea, there have always been pathways. There have been animal trails throughout environments, migration paths in the air above, and corridors of life connecting reefs, sea-grass patches, and sheltered bays in the sea. Only a million years ago, people began using the animal paths and turning them into beaten tracks. Just recently, a new type of path has been made, dirt tracks made for horse and cart. This was followed by bitumen and concrete not long after sea routes were established. And another type of pathway has been established so early anybody over the age of sixty can remember it.

Like money, armies, tools, leaders, and advertising, our society is built on pathways, and without them everything would collapse. Unlike all those things, especially the latter, pathways have been needed since the beginning of time. Even planets and stars follow established paths around each other. This article focuses mainly on manmade pathways. The place I live, the Central Coast, is a great example of many pathways.

In the early 1800s Central Coast, settlers such as the Fagan family and Thomas Alison Scott, who founded the town of Tascott, shipped their produce, mainly lemons and other citrus fruit, to the growing colony of Sydney. Meanwhile, another colony was growing in the north at the end of the Hunter River, and became capital of the Hunter Valley, where settlers grew a lot of produce for the colony. As the Hunter Valley became a wine region and the demand for food rose in Sydney, the governor had no choice but to build a road connecting the two towns. It was finished in 1836 after eleven years of convict labor, and was such a good road that restorers with modern equipment have had trouble keeping up.

The road fell quickly into disuse. In order to avoid the notorious Hawkesbury River, the road had to go very far inland. The road was too curvy, the grades were too steep, there was lack of water and horse feed, and boats were much faster and efficient anyway. Put simply, the road was too close to the Blue Mountains.

Around that same time, the Main North Railway line was being put together between Newcastle and Armidale, a town in the plains up north. As demand for a railway between Sydney and Newcastle increased, a ferry lost control in a gale in Broken Bay and smashed into a rock with the loss of lives. The sea was not going to be a safe place for passengers between the cities in a while.

In 1887, a railway line was opened from the Sydney suburb Hornsby to the River Wharf station on an island off the southern shore of the Hawkesbury River. The project included two tunnels and a bridge. At the same year, a line was opened from Newcastle to the Central Coast town of Gosford. Passengers had to get off the train at River Wharf and take a long boat ride to Gosford in order to arrive at Newcastle.

In 1888, a tunnel was made to connect the Central Coast town of Woy Woy to the banks of the Mullet Creek River. The tunnel was, at the time, the longest in Australia. After the construction of Mullet Creek Station, the boat from River Wharf was not nearly so long. By this time, the railway lines connecting Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Brisbane were finished, except for the Hawkesbury River. After the railway bridge from Mullet Creek to River Wharf was finally constructed, the stations were moved and called Wondabyne and Brooklyn respectively. Since most of the builders were from New York, the town at the southern end of the bridge was called Brooklyn. Wondabyne is the only train station in Australia which does not have road access.

In 1930, the Pacific Highway was finished between Sydney and Brisbane, replacing a small horse track known as Peats Ferry Road, built in 1850 between Hornsby and settler George Peat's property near what is now Somersby. The road crossed the Hawkesbury River via a bridge to the tiny community of Mooney Mooney, and continued via Gosford and Wyong to the stretch of land between Lake Maquarie and the Pacific, and on to Newcastle. This road still remains. The Sydney-Newcastle Freeway was built more recently, in the 1960s, and crosses the highest road bridge in Australia at Mooney Mooney Creek.

The last route that connects Sydney to Newcastle was made in the 1980s. It is called the Great North Walk, and is a very popular long-distance walking track. I might make a post about that later. The Central Coast is just one example of man-made pathways. There are millions in the world, and some of you may live in one.