Competing Voices on the Road: Seeking Pleasure and Representing Death on the Pacific Highway

Abstract

The Pacific Highway is a dynamic space, continually in flux since its creation in the late 1920s. Welcomed as a modern, high-speed thoroughfare, it became part of people's lives as they travelled for work or holidays. Early voices on the highway told stories of escape and mobility, of the wonders of technology and the pleasures of the open road. As traffic volumes rose and motor vehicles became more powerful, a competing narrative developed. The Pacific Highway was a death road, with a fatality rate sixty percent higher than the NSW average by 2001. For the past twenty years, the voices of the dead have competed with those of the pleasure seekers. The usual roadside furniture of signs, telephone poles and guardrails has been reinscribed with flowers, crosses and names, memorials to the seemingly inexorable road toll. The media have given voice to grieving families and most recently, death and the Pacific Highway have been linked in the visual arts. The once silent voice of the Pacific Highway dead is now being heard.