Australia is a big country with miles and miles - sorry - kilometres and kilometres - of long and dreary roads. From the start of white settlement those travelling by horse and dray - and later those travelling by that new invention - the automobile - were plagued by one small lack of a convenience - a place to relieve themselves when they needed to " spend a penny ".
As a result, it became the custom to duck behind a convenient tree.
That is no longer an option as the population has surged and our roads become an almost uninterrupted flow of traffic.
Fortunately our needs have been met by a plethora of rest stops including picnic tables, parking areas - and most importantly - toilets.
But - there is a vast disparity in their distribution.
For some unknown reason the Hume highway and the Federal highway connecting Sydney with Canberra has an inordinate number of such facilities. This stretch of road has been named " Remembrance Drive " and each of the rest stops is dedicated to one of this country's winners of the Victoria Cross. Presumably rest stops at short intervals are a result of fitting a large number of such winners into a given stretch of road.
Unfortunately the needs of motorists and other travellers has not reached other highways. From Canberra to Cooma - a matter of 110 kilometres - there is just one rest stop with toilets, and the heavily travelled F-6 from Wollongong to Sydney has none at all.
Perhaps it would have been better to expand rest stops across all state highways as a mark of respect to VC winners, rather than concentrate them between Sydney and Canberra - but then again - maybe it is something about politics that make them a necessity with more frequency on that particular road !
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