Mention Piccadilly Circus to most Canberrans and their minds immediately fly across the ocean to London's famous intersection. They picture a frantic swirl of double-decker buses, black cabs, selfie-snapping tourists and flashing neon billboards, all locked in a permanent state of noisy, organised chaos.
But if you are one of the few who has ventured beyond the Cotter and Uriarra into our high country, you'll know we have our very own Piccadilly Circus. And to say it's less hectic would be an understatement.
How quiet? Well, on a drive into the ranges earlier this week, I parked the Yowie-mobile, sat on a log beside the intersection, and remained undisturbed for 30 glorious minutes. No flashing billboards, screaming sirens or impatient peak-hour crowds. In fact, the only "traffic" I encountered was a wallaby bounding across the dusty junction, while the soundtrack was the call of a lone lyrebird echoing crisply through the distant valleys.
This remote, often mist-shrouded clearing hidden away in the rugged folds of the Brindabella Range is where the gravel of Brindabella Road meets the narrow, winding tracks of Mount Franklin Road and Two Sticks Road. It is a world away from its English counterpart.
But change is afoot. This quiet corner of the 'Brindies' is on the cusp of a major facelift. Later this month, the Snowy Valleys Council will fire up the heavy machinery and turn the first sod on a $37.4 million upgrade (100 per cent funded by an Australian government grant) of Brindabella Road. Construction crews will begin right at this mountain intersection - which marks the ACT-NSW border - and push 10.6 kilometres westward to the river flats of the Brindabella Valley.
I remember hearing chatter about this road being upgraded back in the late 1980s. For decades, the project has been a bit like the Very Fast Train: lots of talk, little action. While that is finally about to change on the NSW side, I wouldn't be holding your breath for the 8km on the ACT side of the border to be upgraded. "There are no immediate plans to seal the remaining unsealed segment [on the Canberra side] of Brindabella Road" was the response from the office of City and Government Services Minister Tara Cheyne.
This means that for the foreseeable future, motorists travelling on the Brindabella Road through to Tumut and beyond will still have to traverse unsealed gravel on either side of the upgrade. As the newly paved stretch will effectively become an island of bitumen, the upgrade is unlikely to spark any significant increase in traffic just yet.
But while many of today's weekend warriors might regard Brindabella Road as little more than a scenic drive, it hasn't always been that way. During the 1990s, high-country historian Matthew Higgins - a good friend of this column - was told by John Dowling, a former owner of Brindabella Station, that well into the early decades of the 20th century, a sharp-eyed traveller could still spot the scars left by those who had hauled their way over the range.
Dowling recalled that "the gouges made by the hubs of dray wheels on the tight corners of the primitive road over the Brindabella Range and down to the Franklin family's station at Brindabella could still be seen".
Those marks have fallen victim to many a bulldozer and grader, but I wish I'd seen them.
The historic route can also be downright treacherous when the weather turns foul. Snowstorms, black ice and torrential rain can turn this vital mountain track into a perilous challenge.
In a 2022 Canberra Times article, Higgins ventured down the rabbit hole to find the origins of the intersection's peculiar name. "Reflecting that sense of Australian bush irony, the junction became known as Piccadilly Circus, named after one of London's busiest intersections," he wrote.
But who coined the name? Higgins suggests it may have been Brindabella forester Cyril Cole, who served in Britain during World War II.
I rather like that uncertainty. Somewhere along the line, in the middle of the Brindabellas, somebody looked at this lonely bush junction and thought: Piccadilly Circus. Whether it was Cole or someone else, the joke stuck. London has traffic jams; Brindabella has roos. London has flashing lights; Brindabella has snow gums. At our circus, you might have to wait an hour just to see another vehicle.
I've no doubt that if you've ever bounced or vibrated your way along Brindabella Road, your car's suspension - and your dental fillings - will thank the council for the upgrade. But for those of us captivated by old roads, abandoned tracks and the whispers of mountain folklore, it is also a slightly bittersweet milestone. The end of an era.
So, if you want to channel that pioneering spirit before it's too late, head up into the ranges over the next couple of weeks. Pull over at the intersection, turn off your engine, and step out into the crisp mountain air. If you listen hard enough, amongst the lyrebird calls you might just hear the ghostly creak of long-gone timber drays rounding the bends, their wheel hubs gouging into the clay banks.
Oh, and be sure to take a few minutes to search for the lockspit - a line of packed stones used by surveyors - that marks the border beneath the conglomeration of signs on the northern side of the intersection. That is something even its London namesake can't claim.
The imminent upgrade will make the road safer, and that's got to be a good thing. But I hope Piccadilly Circus never becomes so busy that it loses its greatest charm.
Its silence.
Long before Europeans arrived in the 1820s, the rugged Brindabella landscape was an important seasonal route. For millennia, Aboriginal groups with traditional connections to the high country moved through this landscape, travelling towards Mount Coree and Bimberi for ceremony, trade and the seasonal bogong moth harvest.
European pastoralists expanded into the region in the 1830s, with Terence Aubrey Murray of Yarralumla establishing a holding at Brindabella and using the mountains for high-country grazing. In the late 1840s, settler Joseph Franklin attempted to establish himself in the valley, but resistance from traditional custodians eventually led him to withdraw.
The region changed dramatically with the 1860 Kiandra gold rush, as many gold seekers began using the Brindabella route, transforming it into a primitive pack-horse track. This sudden influx of travellers disrupted Indigenous life, and in the early 1860s, the Franklin family returned to permanently establish Brindabella Station.
For decades, the pass remained a gruelling, single-lane dirt track. In 1903, Alexander Wilkie Watson, founder of The Tumut Advocate, is believed to be among the first to traverse the rugged range in a motor vehicle (horseless carriage), demonstrating that it could serve as a genuine vehicular link between Tumut and the developing capital region.
DID YOU KNOW?
Rating: Easy- Medium
Clue: A stone's throw from some real ones
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to [email protected]. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday September 19 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Congratulations to Julie Nimmo of Deakin who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo as looking up into the copper dome at the Magna Carta Monument (2001) at Magna Carta Place in Parkes, just north-west of Old Parliament House. Julie just beat Penleigh Body of Reid, Kim Fitzgerald of Deakin and Paul Strasser to the prize. As pointed out by several readers, including John McDonald of Kambah "the monument's unique architecture is packed with hidden symbolism, including the burial mound design that resembles an ancient English burial mound (barrow) that has been "cut open" to reveal the treasure of democracy inside". Meanwhile Jeff Hughes reports "It produces some cool sound effects when standing under it and making sounds". In fact, to test its acoustics, Steve Leahy once sang under the dome. "The effect is more cathedral than shower. Not quite as deep a reverb as the underpass between Macquarie and Weetangera on Coulter Drive, but at least you don't get the repeated clunking sounds of traffic passing overhead," he quips.
Although local road signs point toward it, Piccadilly Circus on the ACT/NSW border is not gazetted in the ACT or NSW. It is, however, recorded in the ACT feature names database and features on many maps, including on a 1950 map of the ACT.
Historically, the name has not been approved by everyone. W.P. Bluett of Brindabella, a prominent, long-time resident of the area, was particularly aggrieved by the moniker given to the high-country intersection. In a passionate letter to The Canberra Times published on September 11, 1953, Bluett complained that while a painted "Piccadilly Circus" sign had been torn down on "half a dozen occasions" - likely by "some government official of good sense" - a new sign had recently been erected. This time, he noted, it was "firmly fixed to a tree bole with large spikes to defy removal".
Bluett did not hide his ire, colourfully ranting, "It is a pity that the famed Eros [actually Anteros] statue facing Piccadilly Circus [in London] could not fall on the moron responsible."
While Bluett would likely be pleased to see that no such sign stands at the intersection today, its disappearance remains a local mystery. Was the sign eventually stolen by souvenir hunters? Or was it simply never replaced after the devastating 2003 bushfires? Someone must know.
CONTACT TIM: Email: [email protected] or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
