It's one of our region's most recognisable stretches of highway - the Billilingra Straight.
You know, that long, straight stretch of Monaro Highway between Bredbo and Cooma.
Heading south, or north, as you come over the rise, it looks like the bitumen extends as the far horizon.
I often ask friends in the car just how long they think it is.
And every single time they over-estimate its length.
Depending exactly where you reset your odometer, it's only about five kilometres. Yes, I've re-measured it many times. And no, it doesn't get any longer.
Maybe it's an optical illusion, the length accentuated by mountain ranges that run parallel to each other on either side of the valley. Or maybe it's the presence of the winding former railway line, its ghost tracks occasionally glimpsed to the east of the road.
I've also timed it, and if you sit just on the speed limit of 100km/h, it takes about three minutes. Sure, it seems longer, especially if you are behind a slow truck, but that's it. Just three minutes.
And it seems I'm not the only one who's measured it.
On the For the Love of Jindabyne Facebook page, A. Smith of Jindabyne reports: "Since 1974 we've guessed at distances and time (down to precise seconds) of that straight stretch. It's a family tradition. Four generations now."
While at five kilometres it pales in comparison to other straight sections of Australian highway - most famously the 90 Mile Straight on the Eyre Highway in Western Australia, which spans 146.6 kilometres without a single bend - the Billilingra Straight is a rite of passage for many travelling to the snow or South Coast.
And for those who live in the Snowy Mountains, it's a bit like Canberrans catching the first glimpse of Black Mountain Tower when travelling down the Federal Highway back from Sydney.
"You aren't far from home when you are coming down that hill," says a friend who lives in Cooma.
While it's much longer than a mile, the spectacular stretch of bitumen has also earned the moniker of 'The Mad Mile' due to the daredevil (and illegal) action of some drivers who treat it as a speedway. Best I don't tell you the speeds some claim to have reached along there. Suffice to say the local constabulary has a field day.
Not surprisingly with such reckless driving on a public road, there have been many accidents there, including fatalities.
But the most extraordinary crash was in 2000, when, while travelling towards Cooma on the morning of March 13, a Narrabundah man's Audi left the Billilingra Straight near the turnoff to Billilingra Road, plummeting down a seven-metre embankment before crashing into a tree.
But it wasn't how the car left the road that makes this incident so memorable - more how long it took the driver to be found.
Hidden from passing traffic and jammed between his seat and car door, the driver was unable to free himself and it was only by chance that he was found by a farmer at 5pm the following Friday when driving his tractor past the spot. Heck. That's five days after the accident.
At first, the farmer thought the accident must have occurred a few days earlier, but when he went for a closer look, he noticed what looked like a body still inside the wreck. And when he called out, the hand moved.
Luckily the driver had suffered only cuts, bruises, and dehydration and in her book The Road South: A picturesque & romantic history of a well-travelled track (RNK, 2005) Ruth McFadden reports he survived the week by "water sucked from a small pillow soaked by rain".
While the exact route of the road has shifted over time, local creeks have always flooded, disrupting travellers on horses and in cars.
An article from the Evening News in Sydney on January 13, 1931, referring to the former coaching days, reports on how horses crossed a bridge not far from the current alignment of the Billilingra Straight.
"Recent floods had played a rough game with the bridge, the floor of which had sagged in the middle down to the level of the riverbed, so that it presented the appearance of a broadened V. How one recalls the mad rush down to the centre in the darkness, and the slow crawl up the farther side when the impetus thus gained was spent." Giddy-up!
Then in 1964, a passenger with a broken leg in plaster was lucky to survive following an intense cloudburst near Billilingra Creek, which meant he struggled to get out in time before the car was washed off the road.
Finally, no account of Billilingra Straight is complete without reference to George (some call him Bob) the ostrich.
I recently received the following missive from Garry Conroy, clearly worried the exotic bird had gone walkabout.
"Any chance of a welfare check on him?" he asked.
"He's my fishing good luck charm, if I see him on the way to Eucumbene, the fishing's good. Haven't seen the dear fellow for some weeks now, I pray he hasn't gone the way of all flesh. Yep, and the fishing's been the pits."
Thankfully, I've just received another message from Garry. "Alert averted, I just spotted him, he's still alive. Phew!"
So, did it help the fishing?
"Well, not yet anyway," he muses.
It's all in a name: The straight takes its name from the surrounding rural locality of Billilingra and the historic 'Billyling[e]ra' pastoral run established in the area in 1832. 'Billylingera' is believed by some to be derived from a Ngarigo word thought to mean either 'the resting place of the Brolga' or 'where Billil grows'.
Snail's pace: Not everyone travels at break-neck speed along the straight. After the death in 1880 of John Cosgrove, a well-respected Monaro pioneer who owned the 'Billyling[e]ra' property, his funeral procession "wended its way at a walking pace south along the road to Cooma".
Sure, back then the road wasn't as straight as it is now, but the cortege must have been quite the sight, with The Cooma Express reporting "it was led by two priests in a buggy and the horse-drawn hearse was followed by John Cosgrove's nine daughters, three sons and their spouses and some sixty employees. Following them came more than three hundred horses, buggies and sulkies from all over the district..."
Three hundred horses! Little wonder the procession extended for "over a mile".
Can you imagine the tailgating from SUVs with skis strapped on the roof racks that the mourners would have to endure if the funeral was held today?
Did You Know? The second ConFest, a mass lifestyle gathering, was held just to the west of the Billilingra Straight at Mt Oak in 1977. It drew more than 15,000 attendees seeking to explore alternative living, sustainability and personal growth. If the name ConFest rings a bell for you, that's because the first ConFest was held much closer to home, at the Cotter. Initiated by former deputy prime minister Jim Cairns and his secretary Junie Morosi, that inaugural event was also called 'Down to Earth'.
Rating: Medium
Clue: Right next to the road
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday June 20 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Steve Rule of Calwell who was first to correctly identify last week's photo as the chimney at Bobeyan Homestead in southern Namadgi National Park. The clue of 'charred legs' related to Richard Brayshaw (1865-1954) who lived in the homestead for almost his entire life. In his later years Richard famously would sit on a wooden chair inside the corner of the very large chimney and read while the fire was burning in the other corner of the fireplace. And yes, apparently on several occasions the legs of the chair closest to the flames caught on fire.
Several readers did a double-take when they saw a photo of the Young railway station sign that was recently donated by Barry Snelson of Calwell to the Young Historical Museum.
"What happened to the 'N'?" asks Jake McDonald of Kambah. Yes, well it does look a little odd in the photo in Barry's shed, doesn't it? According to Barry, the N was already missing from the sign when he 'rescued' it from a rubbish pile in Young in the 1980s so when he displayed it in his garage, he simply added a temporary N made of steel. "However, I was recently given an original cast-iron N which was affixed just before the sign was put on display in the museum," Barry reveals.
Meanwhile, Steph Marshall of Queanbeyan asks, "What's the story with the wonky G?". It's a common question with historic NSW railway signs that include the letter 'G'. Regular readers may recall some residents of Gunning who, for the same reason, when their station's sign - complete with that unusual historic font - was reinstated a few years ago, thought they'd arrived at 'Cunninc'. "That G is certainly a quirk of late 1800s signage," Barry explains.
CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
