Making a road: creating infrastructure

A century or more ago, building roads was a time-consuming business. Bullock teams hauled stone road rollers one way, then the other, to compact the earth. Corrugations on the rollers maximised the pressure.

Infrastructure like roads is very important to the wellbeing of a society. In Australia goods are often transported by road across the country. However, wear and tear caused by heavy vehicles means roads need constant, expensive maintenance. Rail could offer a good alternative as fuel prices rise and road transport becomes more costly.

Photography by Henry King Studio
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Sandra McEwen, Principal Curator

Tags: cattle, roads, Tyrrell

Erika

Debbie, I love this post! People always question what a curator actually does and this post could be used as a perfect example of using seemingly unrelated collection objects to weave an interesting and relevant narrative. Love it. Erika

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.