Behind the Lens | Enjoy a slow Midland Highway crawl

It was the 80s, I drove a Valiant Charger, petrol and tyres were cheap and I went through plenty of both.

But that was then. Fortunately, these days there's an outlet for an old hoon in me.

What's better, stronger, faster than a 265 Hemi charger?

A work car. The Examiner's choice of hoon, I mean, pool car at the moment is Hyundai.

This results in a huge internal conflict: on one hand, the i30 is comfortable, reliable, zippy, economical, on the other hand, it's a Hyundai, and those early "High Undies" were just awful, and I'm old enough to remember and be put off for life.

Old Midland Highway roadside scene at Kempton.

One thing I have discovered in my old age is the enjoyment of taking hours to drive along the Midland Highway to and from Hobart.

I don't mean six hours return because of the roadworks, I mean six hours one way stopping off and visiting little towns and roadside scenes.

Back when we had kids who loved the Cars movie, my wife Michelle referred to me as Doc Hudson.

I'm not sure why, perhaps it was stopping off at Tunbridge, which she still calls Radiator Springs, for the 23rd time to photograph another old ruin, and make a coffee while admiring the old stagecoach and imagining how good and bad it would be at the same time to travel on it.

Ruin beside the old Midland Highway at Tunbridge.

Back in the 50s, Ten Pound Pom grandpa George Biggs and his wife Harriet made a rare 1958 'overseas' trip from Melbourne to Hobart, and on to Launceston.

His Kodachrome collection shows some interesting pictures of Port Arthur, before crossing the vertical lift bridge at Brighton, which was only about 10 years old, to begin their journey north on the Midland.

Back then, Old Main Road behind McDonald's at Brighton was just Main Road, and the suburb didn't look like a scene from The Walking Dead.

Somewhere around St Peters Pass, where the narrow road wound through hills, a flock of sheep blocking the road was worth one photo.

Traffic jam on the Midland Highway near St Peters Pass, 1958. Picture: George Biggs

They travelled through Melton Mowbray, Jericho, Tunbridge, Oatlands, Ross, and into Launceston, over all those quaint old bridges and through towns that are now bypassed, without taking another frame.

It occurred to me, they'd left England only five years before, little villages like these would have seemed 'normal', not quaint or worth photographing.

I see it's my duty now to make up for that.

These days I like to take it easy behind the wheel and give the camera a workout.

I almost always detour at Jericho to see if there's something different.

Old Midland Highway hotel south of Oatlands.

There never is, but at the historic church, there's a rare patch of native grassland, and up the road, a bit is the remaining mud wall of an early 1800's road building convict settlement.

And further on near the old hotel south of Oatlands grows a roadside apple tree where you can get a free healthy snack at the right time of year.

The highway is changing day by day and on some of the newer parts it's difficult to pull over to get a nice landscape photo, even if the weather is performing.

The old towns and the old bypassed bits are definitely worth a slow crawl through.

It's a bit like Tasmania's old route 66.

Photographer Phillip Biggs

A stormy sunset over the Midland HIghway near Breadalbane.

Sending photos back to the office from Kempton football ground.

Ross Uniting Church.

Callington Mill, Oatlands.

A frosty, foogy morning at St James Anglican church on the old Midland Highway Jericho bypass.