Bypass: the story of a road by Michael McGirr

Review by Tony Smith*

Michael McGirr Bypass: the Story of a Road, Picador Pan Macmillan, Sydney, 2004
313pp Paperback ISBN 0-330-36493-6 rrp $30.00

The metaphor of life as a journey has been used as long as people have told stories about their experiences. Travel writing is just one section of a broader category of journey inspired works that includes coming of age novels, political and social comparisons and adventure yarns. Perhaps we anticipate the possible excitement that could emerge around the next corner, or perhaps we see the journey as a means of overcoming distance, giving us control of at least one aspect of our lives.

Embarking on a journey is always risky because it involves change. In Michael McGirr’s case, the most important theme is his quest to understand the changes in his own life. By setting out on bicycle, the author has slowed the world down to enable him to investigate more deeply the history of the places he passes. By making visible, hidden aspects of small places ignored by the modern Hume Highway, McGirr invites personal reflection on the changes he experienced himself.

McGirr left the Jesuits after 21 years as a priest. He likened it to ‘getting divorced, sacked and evicted all on the same day’. Searching for stability, he bought a house in Gunning, thinking that he would ‘rest for a while beside the Hume Highway’. This was an interesting decision given that ‘the road is a monument to restlessness’. The road is home to numerous monuments, mostly to the young who died on it, or in foreign wars.

McGirr was sure that his priestly work ‘mattered to people, but there’s a difference between thinking your work is important and thinking you are important because you do the work. I am afraid I was beginning to think I was important because of what I did’.

Soon after beginning alone from his mother’s house in North Sydney, he rings his partner Jenny in Melbourne. She comments that he has ‘five kay down and 900 to go’. He thought: ‘I felt like I was cycling towards her. But it was too early to tell her that’.

He buys a copy of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. ‘God however, is a notoriously difficult author. He/she does not stick to deadlines, organises his/her own publicity and has scant regard for the laws of defamation. Above all, God is above all. God does not work with editors’. He thinks it a pity that Lao Tzu did not live in the age of bumper stickers because he had a natural flair for thought provoking one-liners, such as ‘one who excels in travelling leaves no wheel tracks’.

It is interesting to note the tracks that McGirr finds easiest to follow. While he includes the obvious personalities such as the explorers, bushrangers, road builders and Prime Ministers, he also finds reason to mention truckies, eccentrics, farmers and writers. Reflecting on the adventures of backpackers, he calls them explorers, searchers after truth and in their own way, pilgrims.

He stops overnight with a ‘community’ in Goulburn. It is a ‘haven of sanity’ where he enjoys the stillness: ‘The community doesn’t make much song and dance when it prays, no effort to impress anyone with clever words or pumped-up emotion … When you’ve been praying a long time you get over that … prayer is a form of rest. It’s better to whisper. It’s like pillow talk, even if it’s more like sleeping with a partner who won’t wear their hearing aid to bed. Prayer is a form of rest and rest is a form of prayer’.

While emphasising the spiritual importance of prayer, McGirr finds that most prisoners in Goulburn jail are not literate. Whether speaking to God or other humans, ‘the inability to express oneself is the cornerstone of social alienation’. He is amazed by the way the prison chaplain copes with the despair around him: ‘that is one reason he is still a priest and I am not. I am afraid of the dark. I’d rather not face it alone’. Fortunately, Jenny joins him for most of the ride.

Perhaps McGirr is appealing for understanding of his own decision here. Whatever interpretation is placed on his comments about the priesthood however, it is clear that in the twenty-first century, it is essential that both clergy and laity try to understand the role of priesthood. Not only is it changing, but so too are the expectations being placed upon it. A realistic understanding makes the role possible to fill, while unrealistic expectations position the incumbents to fail.

McGirr and Jenny attend mass in one town where the priest ‘said mass in a choreographed manner, his every action carefully rehearsed … the worshippers never missed a beat … in a stylised ritual’. McGirr is alienated. He believes that the point of Christianity is that the gap between God and humanity is tiny, is so small you can whisper across. ‘People should feel free in church to be themselves’. He tells Jenny that he does not miss saying Mass. He had found the vow of obedience too easy. ‘I became compliant. My life was dedicated to gaining the affirmation of those around me’.

He had counselled people getting married. It was better to do that when he knew nothing about relationships, easier in the abstract. Religious life was a flat road with twists and turns. Life with a partner is a straight road with hills and valleys. The ups and downs give the heart an emotional workout so you feel alive. You can’t preach to a partner. Journeys give us new perspectives on our homes and what they mean to us, how they affect our lives. McGirr once had a St Christopher medal on his bike, but responsibility for travelling has now been allocated to St Anthony. McGirr thinks this appropriate because Anthony of Padua is the one who helps you find things, and that is the basic purpose of travel – to find something out there, or something inside yourself. They name their son Ben. McGirr explains about St Benedict and how most of his instructions to his followers involved listening.

The image of the journey is used frequently to refer to marriages and other relationships, including the individual’s relationship to his or her God. It is a popular reference in hymns and homilies. In Michael McGirr’s subtle treatment, the trip along ‘Australia’s main street’ is both entertaining and thought provoking. At its best, it is as good as anything written by Theroux or Morris or Bryson. You would be lucky to read a better book on ‘inbound’ tourism.

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* Tony Smith holds a PhD in political science and is a regular contributor to ACMICA Enews.