FEW PEOPLE come to Gunning, NSW, population 530, for something to read. Before 1993, people came because they couldn't avoid it. The Hume Highway used to bring 3000 semitrailers a day along the main street. 'At least you got to read the bumper stickers,' one resident said when I moved here. 'Because it was sure as hell impossible to talk.'

The local real estate agent tells me that, when the bypass was built, farmers were compensated $1000 an acre for the land that was reclaimed for the new freeway. The figure is so much higher than what land will bring now, it causes rancour. It keeps getting quoted by people who need some yardstick with which to measure their sense of loss. I bought a three-bedroom house for about the cost of a five-year-old family sedan without airbags. The agent told me, with surprising candour, that I might never get my money back.

People come here because they need a change from the monotony of the Hume Highway. They come to change a nappy, refuel, grab a bite. Then they go. They soon forget the name of the town. In my first week here, I came across a lost tourist outside the Post Office. He was from Japan.

'Sydney? Sydney?' he pleaded, asking the way back to the main road.

'This ain't Sydney, mate,' returned a passer-by without much warmth.

I showed the man the sign that would help.

There is much worth reading here besides the street signs. There's a library. The librarian will tell you, if you want to renew your books, just to slip a note under the door. There's the timetable at the railway which indicates that each day one train heads north and one south. There's the graffiti at the free local pool. Some genius has removed the 'l' from almost every occurrence of the word 'pool' on the premises. 'Poo depth', 'Children must be supervised while using this poo', and 'pubic poo'. It gets a bit dull after a while.

The best reading, however, is to be found in the cemetery. There are more people buried in Gunning than currently live here. There is a memorial to Susannah Watson, born in 1794. She is identified simply as 'a convict woman'. Her plaque was renewed last year by her descendants. People come to Gunning to trace their roots, to see where grandparents and great-grandparents settled, to visit the place they left. Susannah Watson died in the locality in 1877.

Some of the graves are articulate because they say so little. A good number of these belong to infants, identified by the family name but not a name of their own. Two separate graves are marked simply, 'Baby Lees'. In the same grave are buried Selina Waters, who died in 1921 at the age of ninety-three, and Miriam Hillier, who died in 1927 having lived for just three weeks. Henry Lanham's grave is next to that of Maurice Lanham. One lived ninety-two years, the other eight years. There are many instances of this. They make you think. Even a long life is short.

Nevertheless, there must have been a time when masonry was cheap, if not exactly free. The grave of a young man killed suddenly at work includes lengthy reminders to hold one's soul in readiness for death. Elsewhere, the reader learns that Matilda Parsee Rayner was 'born aboard the sailing ship Parsee en route from England' in 1852 and died in Gunning in 1935. 'She was the daughter of Constable Samuel Nelson who was killed by Ben Hall's gang at Collector, 26.1.1865.'

Not far away is the tomb of John Kennedy Hume, the brother of Hamilton Hume, after whom the highway is named. John was 'murdered at Gunning 20.1.1840 aged 39 whilst rendering assistance to his neighbours to capture a party of bushrangers headed by the notorious Whitten. He left a widow and nine young children to bewail his loss.'

Four or five kilometres from the cemetery is an obelisk marking the point from which Hume and Hovell set out on their pathfinding trek to Port Phillip in 1824. Hume's memorial is the road. It is fittingly pragmatic. He kept no journal on that first trip; many years later he pitted his recollections against those of Hovell. The two disliked each other intensely; it's hard to know whom to believe about what happened. They were the first of thousands of couples to squabble on that route; the first of many who just wanted to get to where they were going.

The result is that Gunning doesn't feature much in letters. In 1905, Banjo Paterson found himself on a motor reliability trial from Sydney to Melbourne. 'Gunning went by like a flash.' That's it. He saw more in his days on horseback, when getting places took more time.