The Highway to Yesterday: When Progress Paves Over Memory

There’s a phrase we hear often: “the march of progress.” It conjures images of innovation, growth, and moving forward. And often, it’s a good thing, bringing advancements that improve our lives. But sometimes, this relentless march brings with it a different kind of change – one that paves over the past, transforming what we held dear into something unrecognizable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, prompted by a landscape that used to be… something else entirely.

I remember a time, long ago now, when ‘country’ truly meant country. Our holidays at my grandmother’s house, nestled just outside Melbourne, were expeditions into a different world. The drive itself was part of the magic. A comfortable half-hour journey, winding through stretches of open farmland, punctuated by small, charming towns – Beaconsfield, Officer, Berwick – each an oasis amidst the green. Today? That same route is a continuous sprawl of houses, a testament to metropolitan expansion, where those ‘oases’ are now just another indistinguishable part of the urban fabric.

But it was Grandma’s house that truly held the enchantment. A rambling, grand old place on extensive grounds, it was a universe waiting to be explored. Gardens, multiple garages overflowing with forgotten treasures, a huge workshop – it was a child’s paradise. One Christmas, my brother and I, armed with a sense of adventure and a few rusty tools, decided to become archaeological explorers. We unearthed a magnificent fountain, hidden beneath years of overgrowth, clearly once the centerpiece of a grand display. It felt like discovering our very own secret garden, complete with a sprawling, mysterious fernery.

Then there were the internal explorations. A whole wing of bedrooms, each a time capsule. I recall an ancient iron bedstead, so high off the ground we had to climb into it, easily a century old. And in another, the faint, lingering presence of my Uncle – a formidable, towering man whom, in our youthful imaginations, we first mistook for an ogre straight out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. The way his heavy footsteps would ‘clomp’ through the silent house after dark still sends a shiver of delicious apprehension down my spine.

But the march, as it always does, continued. And today, all of it is gone. That sprawling house, those secret gardens, the workshop, the echoes of my uncle’s footsteps – replaced. Not by new homes, not by another suburb, but by the relentless concrete and asphalt of a multi-lane highway, carving an alternate coastal route between Melbourne and Sydney. The very ground where those precious memories were made now carries the weight of countless cars, indifferent to the history beneath their tires.

All that remains are the vivid, precious memories of a time that will never return. They are treasures far more valuable than any physical object, etched permanently in the mind’s eye.

The march of progress is inevitable. It brings necessary change, growth, and sometimes, undeniable improvements. But it also exacts a cost, often unseen by those building the future. It’s a powerful reminder to cherish the present, to imbue the places we love with meaning, and to hold onto the stories that define us, because one day, they might be all that’s left.

And for me? It’s provided a rich soil, a fertile ground, for a whole new pile of stories, waiting to be told.