Rock Base sculpture on the Highway To Hell

On the median strip of Canning Highway in Applecross, Perth, sits the Rock Base sculpture — a public artwork paying tribute to AC/DC and the stretch of road widely believed to have inspired their 1979 anthem "Highway to Hell." The sculpture is part of a growing collection of monuments along the highway that acknowledge its place in rock history, connecting the suburbs of Fremantle and Perth through the same route Bon Scott and the Young brothers drove relentlessly during the band's formative years in Western Australia.

Before AC/DC became one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, they were a pub band grinding out sets in Perth and Fremantle venues for next to nothing. Canning Highway was the road between gigs — past the Raffles Hotel at Canning Bridge, through Applecross and along the river, a strip of pubs, petrol stations, and suburban sprawl that any young Australian band in the 1970s would have known by heart. The title "Highway to Hell" has been attributed to various inspirations — the band's gruelling touring schedule, Bon Scott's lifestyle, the Canning Highway run — and it's likely all of them are true simultaneously.

In March 2020, the Perth Festival closed the entire highway and filled it with 150,000 people for a tribute concert called "Highway to Hell" — one of the largest music events ever held in Western Australia. Bands performed on stages along the route while the crowd walked the length of the highway, turning the road itself into the venue. It was a genuinely unprecedented piece of civic rock and roll celebration, and it cemented Canning Highway's status as a pilgrimage route rather than just a commuter road.

The Rock Base sculpture sits among several other AC/DC and Bon Scott tributes scattered along the highway and in nearby Fremantle, where Scott's statue overlooks Fishing Boat Harbour. For fans making the pilgrimage to Bon Scott's Fremantle, Canning Highway is the road to take — not the fastest route between Perth and Freo, but the most meaningful one. The mix of riverside views, suburban pubs, and flat open road still feels like the kind of stretch a hard-drinking band of young Australians would have known intimately.