'This special issue of New Scholar originates from a 2013 conference of the same name held at Macquarie University, convened by the Macquarie University English Department. The conference explicitly sought to examine trends, manifestations and solidifications in Australian writing and modes of analysis which might reveal both new research frontiers and new scholars pursuing twenty-first century approaches to movement, temporality, spatiality, canonicity and
the cross-cultural transference of values and identities. As the conference progressed, the focus on signposting or predicting future Australian literary trends and representations began to be superseded by the contested spaces of ‘the road,’ particularly as a space of contested readings and contests between ways of reading. The word ‘road’ itself etymologically invites this, and the Call for Papers included a reminder of its Old English root rād, with its parallel meanings ‘expedition,’ ‘raid’ and later an ‘open way between two places’ as conducive to postcolonial and transnational considerations. The road has often meant a vital, torrid testing ground for Australian self-definition and annihilation, and as guest editors we were particularly impressed with how the essays to follow took this trope in fiercely independent directions. ' (Author's introduction)
