Book Description

Once Upon A Hume takes the reader on a journey down the ‘Great South Road’, as the Hume Highway was once known. We follow the original route, and rather than going from town to town, we travel personality by personality, catching up with some of the intriguing folk who lived near, or preyed upon, or prospered by, the Great South Road, from its earliest days. Few of these folk - or features - are well-known. All have a story to share. We visit: Hugh McCrae, eccentric poet-laureate of Elderslie. The monstrous Razorback, a menace to travellers and to early settlement itself. Carl Rümker, Picton’s half-mad star-gazing genius. Emily, the Spectre of Redbank Tunnel. Vault Hill, and the scattered bones of the Antill clan. Mary Lupton, who escaped hanging as a teenaged girl and became heir to most of Sydney’s Millers Point. Sophie Corrie, Yerrinbool’s Canned Fruit Queen, who made her life story a work of fiction. George Cutter, the knife-wielding publican of Mittagong... … and many other persons and prominences. Once Upon a Hume is a travellers’ companion. Anecdotal, informative, and chatty, it peoples the Hume Highway landscape with vivid characters and occurrences, profiles prominences, explains place-names, and makes an absorbing panorama of the passing show. This is the first of several volumes about the colourful humanity who dwelt Once Upon A Hume.