Challenging motoring functionalism: Roadside memorials, heritage and history in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

Jennifer Clark first explores the idea of heritage and how it is becoming more inclusive. This presents an interesting perspective for motoring heritage, which has always focused on the modern and the progressive while pushing into a subtext the reality of death on the road and the suffering that goes with it. The building and decoration of memorials express the individualism and humanity of road travellers and make visible the grief associated with road trauma. She examines the trend towards the erection of roadside memorials and explores the possibility that their proliferation invites us to reconsider our ideas about motoring heritage. This interpretation of road travel adds a different dimension to the heroic and romantic image that has fed our ideas of motoring heritage for so long.