There’s an emotive scene in Trent Dalton’s novel Boy Swallows Universe in which young protagonist Eli Bell is perched atop an old bridge, battling to reel in a fish, when his serial prison-escaper friend, “Slim” Halliday, dies on its warped wooden planks.
That rickety structure, the Hornibrook Bridge, long stood as a testament to the gulf between a metropolis and the sleepy communities to its north. To locals, it was known as the “humpity bump”.
