The best way to get from Melbourne to Sydney today is the A1 Coastal Route—winding along Australia’s southern coastline, with ocean views and sleepy beach towns. That’s the way I would have gone. But in 1900, Karl didn’t have that option. The A1, otherwise known as the Princes Highway wouldn’t be built until 1920, which left the Hume ‘Freeway’—now the M31—but at the time it was barely more than a track through the bush. Karl’s route was the same overland path first mapped in 1824 by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, later worn in by drovers, mail coaches, and an increasing number of long-distance cyclists.