Australia’s greatest hitchhiker or my greatest performance

Australia’s Greatest Hitchhiker Performance.

 

 I have claimed a number of things in my life, either rightfully or not. One claim is that I was Australia’s greatest hitchhiker. Another, after I got into performing, was that the hitchhiking I did was my greatest ever performance, and the third claim was that it was mostly undocumented. Sitting in a box in my house in Victoria a number of journals that have some details of lifts that I took. It occurred to me that the documentation is also in my head, and that I could write it down. So the following is the account of my hitchhiking, in Australia and Europe, and it is called Australia’s Greatest Hitchhiker Performance.

 

I have recounted a small percentage here. Many lifts I don’t remember, but many I do. And I think the ones I do is because they had something about them that was memorable. Not now, but at a date after the lift, that caused me to retell the events to someone, and in that re-telling the original events stuck in my memory. Some were funny, some weird, some to illustrate a point, like the Butter and Cheese taster, and some I have told many times, like the guy who could not hold a conversation or the guy who turned every conversation to ‘big dicks’. Some were scary.

 

I was Australia’s greatest hitchhiker not because of the distances I travelled, though they were considerable. It was because of the speeds that I travelled, the fact that I raced other people and always won (though there was a memorable tie). And it was because of my method. I thought about it. A Welsh friend (also a contender for the title) taught me to write where I was going on my camping mat. I thought this was a good idea, but refined it and used to have sheets of white cardboard where I would write my suggested destination, and underneath, the word ‘Please’. Often I would fold the sign in half so I would hold up the destination, and at the moment I realised they were not going to stop I would flash the ‘Please’. You be surprised how many times that worked.

 

Late one night going into Canberra I stopped a car with a young girl driving. I ran up opened the door and lifting my pack said “can I throw this in the back?”

She sat there firmly gripping the wheel and looking straight ahead – “What?”

“Can I throw this in the back.” I held my pack higher. She nodded. I jumped in and put my belt on but she just sat there, and then she said, 

“I’ve never picked up anyone before and it will be OK as long as you don’t do anything.” I realised she was scared and serious.

“It’s OK,” I said reassuringly, “I’ve never hurt anyone.”

Later in the drive she admitted that it was the word please that had made her stop.

 

And I say my suggested destination, because what was on my sign was not always where I was going. I spend a lot of time standing on the side of the road and I thought about this a lot. Too long some might argue. If it was a simple thing, like standing at Yass and going to Canberra, then sure, I’d put Canberra on my sign. But somewhere it was harder to predict where everyone was going required more thought. At Upfield, at the Ford Factory, which at the time was the place to leave Melbourne, I would have one sign that said Seymour, and another that said North, that I flashed if the first failed. One day a kombi was overtaking a truck, saw the North, cut across in front of the truck and howled to a stop. He was going to Queensland, but turning off low and going up through Wagga. He had some nice hash and when we got stopped by roadworks we’d skin up. I should have got out in Albury but enjoyed his company and stuck till Wagga. I was standing there near the airport, swaying, and this guy went past the wrong way, slow, looking at me. I was stoned enough to be paranoid, especially when he pulled up. But then he said “I can’t give you a lift, but I can give you a beer.” I stood on the side of the road and we drank a beer together, and when he finished, he drove off. I was putting the empty in my pack when a car pulled up, and dropped me off at my door in Canberra. A good day all up.

 

Other times you’d predict the most common destination. Leaving Melbourne one time for Arapiles, I arrived at the Arch in Ballarat (a common place to get dropped – if it was raining you could shelter under the vaulted stone), to find other climbers there, Chris Shepherd and Jon Muir and his wife Brigitte, and a large stuffed toy dog, Krondorff. Now, hitchhiker theory was that a couple normally moved faster than a single male, and etiquette said that last to arrive, you took the front spot, furthest along, the last for a vehicle to go past. So I dutifully walked out to the front. We all stood there for half an hour and no one was stopping. I had Horsham on my sign, still 200km away. I changed it to the next town Beaufort, and within 5 minutes was away. I was at Arapiles in 4hrs, Chris took 7 and Jon and Bri, slept on the side of the road and arrived with a time of 12hrs.

 

Sometimes drivers can’t face the thought of having you in their car for hours and if they think they can drop you off in 20 minutes they stop. Often if they’re not stopping, you’ve won them over and you’re with them for longer.

 

And this is where the performance element comes in, or one of them. The side of the road is like gravel wings where you wait for your performance to start. You must be present. You must sell yourself to every car, despite your frustration, the weather, or your shocking hangover You have to be smiling and happy, and you make eye contact (no dark sunglasses) with each driver. You need to make them say no personally (a lot suddenly notice something of great interest on the floor of the car or in the trees on the opposite of the road).

 

But when the car stops, you’re on. And every car is a new first line. You have to stick it, and be confident. In live art, and contemporary Australia theatre, ‘intimate performances’ are all the rage and this was an extended series of these. Within seconds of getting in the car and saying hello I had appraised the car and the driver. Were they well dressed, were there guns in the back, did they stink of cologne (a sure sign of someone in the military who often gave lifts), and more importantly, for your safety, did they appear drunk – or more importantly, too drunk to drive.

 

After this quick appraisal, I would take on a character that I perceived would be most likely to put them at easy. If they were a farmer, I grew up on a farm, a University lecturer would meet the student in me, a bogan would find my accent getting harsher and I would swear more. Anything to put them at ease, so that you would be allowed to stay in the car as long as they continued in your direction.

 

I always saw hitchhiking as a sort of contract. You got a lift, and in return you had to entertain the driver, and sometimes keep them awake. Sadly, with the demise of hitchhiker in Australia this is not the case anymore and most people I pick up can hardly talk, let alone entertain, unless it’s to elucidate me about their particular god.

 

And this is where the second part of the method came in. I always tried to look presentable. I wore a collared white shirt, which at a distance always looked clean, even if you’d slept in it for days. As I often had scary haircuts, I would hide my hair under a nondescript blue terry towelling hat. One pair of elderly women, who picked me up on my way out of Canberra one Christmas said the reason they picked me up was the word ‘please.’ “So many people your age are on drugs and have funny haircuts. It’s so nice to meet a young man with manners.” I didn’t take my hat off, or mention I’d been awake for a few days for a few chemical reasons.

 

Coming out of Perth, I was in Norseman. This is a hitchhiker graveyard. There were dates of up to 8 days scratched on the backs of the signs. I’d got a lift to Coolgardie with a man who said he’d spent 5 days in Norseman, and he married the woman who picked him up. I’d arrived late and slept under a tree which was the only shade at the Servo on the corner. Early, I walked onto the side of the road and stood there. Others turned up and stood there. It got hotter and hotter. Eventually we all gave up and went back under the tree onto the grass, taking turns to proposition cars.

 

Eventually, I said, “Fuck this.”  Reached into my bag and pulled out a clean white shirt, pulled my hat down and walked up to a guy at the pump and asked if he was going to Melbourne. He said he was only going to the next town, 200 k's away. “That’s fine,” I said, “Anything to get out of here.” I walked back to my disbelieving colleagues, grabbed my bag and left. He was going to Melbourne, and took me the whole way, after I convinced him I was no threat.

 

He was hard work. He would only drive at 80km an hour. On the NULLABOR! Most people are going as fast as they possibly can. It’s 3000km. And he wouldn’t let me drive so we had to stop a lot. Every evening, long before dark, he would stop, find a room in a hotel, and I would lie down on the ground next to the car, and when we started I’d get back in. And he could not sustain a conversation. I would say, “Look at that, that is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” And he’d say “Yep.” 3 days!

 

We listened to ABC radio that for two days was the cricket. I still know things about moisturizer that I learnt from the radio that trip.  He had a small box of cowboy books. I read them all.

 

But it did not matter. I was going to get to Melbourne. Ahead of time. A friend had scoffed when I told him I was Australia’s Greatest Hitchhiker. “Have you hitched the Nullabor.”

“No.”

“Then you can’t claim that you’re Australia’s greatest hitchiker.”

“Fair enough. I’ll do it between dole cheques (11days).”

“Bet you can’t.”

“50 bucks.”

 

But though I did it in 10 days, and had a day relaxing on the beach in Perth, he never paid up.

 

I first went hitchhiking with my friend Steve whilst still in high school. We wanted to go Hattah National Park and caught a train up from Melbourne. Hattah didn’t turn out to be as much fun as we’d hoped so we hitched to Mildura. But the hitch that cemented my obsession was later at University in Northern NSW. My friend Jack and I wanted to go climbing in Nimbin, close to the Queensland border, and then we were going to visit my girlfriend on the coast and hitch back down south for semester break. Now, the couple hitching together rule only works if it’s a mixed sex couple, so we had a slow day. We got a lift about 30ks to Guyra, and stood there freezing on the side of the road, reassessing our confidence. A few more lifts got us to Tenterfield, and then just on dark we got a lift down the hill. We arrived in Lismore like we were walking into another country. It was warm, people were out and about and friendly. We spent the next few days hitching around Nimbin. One car picked us up even though they had room for one. Jack sat on my lap and we held the packs on the roof. Leaving the area we got a lift to Alstonville in the back of a ute with some Aboriginal kids. We were in the tropics, the warm wind was in our hair, we felt the world was ours.

 

My girlfriend’s house had puppies. And fleas. I was not allowed to sleep with her so Jack and I slept on the lounge-room floor, with the fleas. About dawn Jack said “Are you awake.”

“Yep.”

“Want to go.”

“Yep.”

“What about Kylie?”

“I’ll call her later and explain.”

We snuck out and it felt so good to be on the road. Later in the day. I was on my knees begging, while Jack was pretending to play the violin. Which didn’t work, but we got there.

 

We soon worked out that hitching together was not the way to go. It takes a special car, or some hippies in Nimbin to pick up two people with large packs. So we began to race.

 

I remember Jack and I raced from Armidale to Canberra. He went via Sydney and I took the inland route. I got a lift with a panel van somewhere north of Bathurst. I was in the back. They handed me a beer and we accelerated in a scream of gravel. Well god looks after drunks, doesn’t he, and I drank the beer and all they passed back. Coming into Bathurst they decided to do a circuit of Mount Panorama, at high drunken speed.  Then they decided that they should raid the orphanage for girls (stay with me here). I remember a guy with a shotgun running after us as we took off (and not much else) showering him with gravel. In Bathurst I 'remembered' a friend (that old line) and they let me out. I’d never got out of a car. Made it stop I mean. I always felt that as long as we were moving in the direction I wanted it was OK. Once only, I feared for my life because of the driver, not their driving. But this is one of the lifts where I should have tried to get out earlier.

 

I fell asleep in the restaurant waiting for my prawn curry. The only other people in the restaurant was an old guy chatting up a brunette with too much make up. I stayed in the cheap hotel attached to the restaurant. When I was hitching out early next morning, the brunette was staggering through the morning's frost. I bought some flavoured milk for breakfast, but didn’t get a chance to open it until at the turnoff outside Cowra. Shit. Off. The worst thing, and no water within a kilometre to rinse the taste out of my mouth. After two days and 700 km I walked in the front door in Canberra just as Jack was walking past the back fence.

 

Another race against Jack was from Melbourne to Canberra. He decided to pair up with Nyrie, working on the old couple theory (although Nyrie was small Chinese woman and looked more like a boy at a distance), and another friend Simon was in the mix. We all left Upfield at the same time. With ‘the method’ I got away first.

 

I did Melbourne to Canberra in 6 hours. Yes, I hear you laugh. That’s impossible. And that was before the freeway. I got a lift with a guy out of Albury who sat on 140 the whole time. Going across the plain near Coolac there were three cars all doing this speed. The first car blew a front tire, which picked the car up by its end and spun it around on its nose three times before it dropped in the dust, upright. We, and the car in front of us had come to a fast stop. As the occupants of the first car open the doors and stepped out, clearly surprised by their survival, we all gave them a round of applause. Simon also made good time, arriving in Canberra after 8 hours but the couple came in a poor last, taking 12 hours.

 

As I mentioned, part of the reason for my claim, was the speeds. The Canberra race was one example, the Perth and back another. The third one was Canberra to Adelaide in 15 hours. Yes, I can here you saying again, impossible. And I concede, extremely implausible. Especially because I had a slow morning. Somewhere west of Wagga I picked up a couple in a beaten up old Fairmont. Somewhere short of Balranald, where they had said they’d take me, the car boiled. I  stood by them while they fussed over the boiling car. Then I politely said if they didn’t mind I’d hitch while we waited. I still had the Balranald sign on my cardboard. A guy in a white holden ute full of truck tyres stopped. I changed persona. He said he could not take me to Balranald. I said I was actually going to Adelaide and he laughed, “Oh, I’m going to Adelaide.” And that was how I learnt the backway into Adelaide, coming across the ferry at Wellington and driving right through Mitchum where I was to stay. Dropped me off at the bottom of Pat’s Mum’s street. Once again, 140 -160 clicks the whole way from the Hay plain. My only regret was that I had ‘road lag’. Pat said that the Clash were playing that night if I wanted to go, and I said I was too tired. TOO TIRED! To see THE CLASH. One of my life’s great regrets.

 

A month later I was to hitch away from Pat’s house with a huge gash in my foot from a razor fish, covered by a bloody bandage, and my jeans smelling of Pat’s vomit after he drank 21 slammers on his 21^st. I drank 23 and drove him home. Pat’s Mum asked me to leave. I couldn’t walk. I’d get out of a car and just stand where I was until I got picked up. Standing at the only place to leave Adelaide before the freeway I was annoyed when a French couple ran for a car I had stopped with my sign, and climbed in. I got to Bordertown, and my record longest wait ever. I spent 7 hours on the side of the road there. But, what sweetened that wait was just before I left, a car pulled up and let out the French Couple. They’d made the classic mistake of accepting a lift to Hahndorf, a well-known hitchhiking graveyard, because you can’t get out, as they’d found out. I was just savouring this small victory, when a car and trailer pulled up. A chainsaw salesman going all the way to Melbourne. He had a sore back and asked if I’d drive. It was an automatic so the damaged foot was not an issue. He dozed all the way to Melbourne and whilst he was asleep we made good time.

 

I always maintained that on a good day hitchhiking was the best way in the world to travel. I remember dropping down out of the Blueys in a hotted up Torana, so fast I felt my ears popping. The sunroof was opened and Jack and I were pressed in the back, a very loud Kiss’ I was Made For Loving You’, the wind and the G Force all pushing us hard against the vinyl seats.

 

On a train or a bus you weren’t waiting by the side of the road, waiting for a pair of red lights to come on, but you couldn’t stop when you wanted. In your own vehicle you could stop whenever, but you didn’t get the narrative of the local people that hitchhiking offered. Part of my performative skill, in putting them at ease, was to be interested in their stories and to tease these out. The classic example was another race.

 

My friend Russell and I were traveling from Armidale to Queensland to go to Frog Buttress to go climbing. We were going to hitch the straight obvious way but I was keen on a girl called Janet who was going to Lismore. The offer was to drive us to Lismore, we’d stay the night at her friends, and then hitch the back way the next day. Needless to say, I persuaded Russell that this was the best option. There was more to this story than I’ll tell now, including a broken windscreen, playing pool in the pub while it was repaired, which it wasn’t, and me driving down the hills with a plastic screen, like a giant sensory video game. It also turned out that Janet’s friends weren’t in Lismore but up in the Shannon which is where the hippies too cool for Nimbin live.

 

We left late because one of Janet’s friends wanted a lift to Lismore to go down the coast to save some whales (I kid you not). It took him all morning to decide what to put in his small satchel. Russell and I hit the road at about noon, late to be starting such a remote road. We had a bet on this race. One beer in the Dugandan Hotel in Boonah for every hour whichever of us won by. Russell got pole position and quickly got a lift and vanished in a cloud of dust. I waited for an hour. Then an old Aboriginal guy picked me up in a beaten yellow ute. We wound up through the hills, and he told me the stories of all the volcanic plugs that reared up out of the rainforest around us. It was amazing, but slow. We had to stop, buy pumpkins, have cups of tea, share more stories. The best lift I ever had. But I was conscious of the amount of beers I would be buying. We got to the T intersection at Woodenbong and he dropped me off. Russell was sitting there, and had been for three hours while I had been winding my way through some of the most beautiful country in northern NSW. Not long after a car came speeding up, it slammed on its brakes and skidded to a stop in front of Russell. He jumped in and in a shower of gravel they headed off. It was just on dark. My image was of sleeping in the forest and arriving 24 beers after Russell. The cars tail lights went on, and it wheeled around, raced back past me, wheeled again, and stopped screeching in the dirt beside me. Russell and the driver had had a brief conversation about whether he knew me or no and bless his soul he had admitted he did. We arrived at the Dugandan at exactly the same time.

 

At times hitching was time travel. I often got lifts with trucks. Often this meant talking for hours through the long night, but as often as not they would say, jump in the cab and get some shut-eye. And then they would wake you six hours later and you were almost home and you’d been in a space travel like stasis. One time hitching with my girlfriend Jan from Melbourne we were again late. We were in Seymour and it was almost dark. A panel van pulled up and Jan crawled into the back onto a comfy mattress. I sat in the front. Hitchhiking etiquette. The guy introduced himself as Beefy, a name he had earned for obvious reasons. It transpired that he was a Penrith boy, 30, and that he had never been out of Penrith, except last year on a cruise, when he’d met a girl from Bendigo, and he was going back to Penrith after the weekend with her. He was very tired. I talked till I was hoarse. “And then there was the time …” Again, he would not let me drive. He dropped us at the Yass turnoff about one in the morning. Jan got out of the back, yawned, and said “That went quickly.” 

 

You soon learnt all the places that were good to leave cities. It was knowledge shared amongst other hitchhikers. They needed to be before the freeway, and this was changing regularly. The Ford Factory at Upfield leaving Melbourne going north, Altona station going west, Dandenong going east. From Sydney it was Casula station going south and Hornsby going North. Cold Chisel, a band I liked at the time for the simple fact that wrote songs about places I knew, not some West Coast of America destinations. In their song, Hound Dog Blues, they write, “Catch the train to Hornsby station… up the coast the grass is greener, the girls are sweeter.”

 

Some towns were nightmares. Albury you always got dropped off on the wrong side and had to walk for ever. And Tamworth. And Newcastle. It wasn’t even worth going into Newcastle if you were headed up to New England, you take the inland bypass, or coming from the Bluies take the Putty, one of the most beautiful roads in Australia.

 

Coming through down the Putty one night in a truck, it was pissing with rain. There was roadworks and one lane of the bridge was closed. The Stop sign guy was sheltering under a tree and only realised we were on the bridge when we were almost over it. He jumped out in front of the truck and then out of the way. I remember the look of horror on his face as he realised how close he was to going under the truck. A pair of headlights coming the other way was not so lucky and swerved to avoid us, crashing into the flooded river. We barrelled off up the hill and I don’t know the outcome of that event. Another night in a truck we blew a tyre in the middle of the Gundagai Bridge. I jumped out to help and landed on the soft rubber above the wheels. This promptly collapsed and I fell onto the railing of the bridge, almost falling the 10 metres to the cow paddocks below.

 

The truck drivers were a world of themselves, with a coarse sense of humour and a strict set of rules. On the CBs they were scathing of the ‘little wheels’ that got in their way, wary of the Mermaids (‘cunts with scales’ – weigh-bridges) and would always ‘catch you on the flip’ (referring to the flipside, the return trip). One driver near Singleton laughed when I bounced all around the cab as the truck acquired a resonance on the grooved road. Another kept telling about this corner he’d had an accident on and that if there was water on the road you couldn’t take it and we came round the corner and there was water on it and we sailed through it harmlessly, with him laughing at the look on my face.

 

The two most interesting truck drivers I met were on the first trip to Perth. I got dropped off at the east end of the Nullabor, where the road goes south to Whyalla, or turns west for the long haul. I quickly learnt to stand a fair way away from the corner as the trucks took it wide, not slowing at all, and I had to dive out of the way several times. Eventually one of them braked to a stop, and I met Mixed Grill, a wiry little guy nicknamed that because at each break he would devour that very thing, a plate of sausages, chops, eggs, tomatoes, and veggies. I wondered how he could do that and be a thin as a cricket stump. Every town we went through he played the Radiators ‘Give Me Head’ on the CB, or ‘Fess’s Song’. Somewhere on the Eyre Peninsula, the weigh bridge was open so we pulled off the road. He said he was going to get some sleep and that I should monitor the CB and wake him when the Mermaids left. I sat with the truck pointed perpendicular to the road. When trucks went past I’d flick the lights (scaring “the shit out of” several) and ask the status of the bridge. After about two hours it was closed and I tried to wake Mixed Grill. No luck. Even shaking him and yelling at him didn’t work. After another couple of hours he woke on his own. I apologized but he seemed unconcerned. We were back on the road shortly.

 

Coming out of Eucla station we waited for twelve identical Mack trucks to pull out ahead of us. It was a sight to remember, these long road trains strung out along the road as you drop off the escarpment.

 

Mixed Grill started a conversation with the truck in front about a problem he’d had with the carburettor. He’d pulled it apart and it had some unexplained black material in it. But the conversation went more like:

“The fucking carby wasn’t working. I pulled the fucking thing apart and it had some fucking black shit in it.” He just kept repeating that. MG would turn the radio down and talk to me and when he sensed a lapse in the words coming from the other driver he would add something like ‘fuckin black shit?’ or ‘in the carby?” and the other driver would go off again repeating the same thing. They were both clearly taking too many amphetamines. We arrived in Perth in the early morning. I had to wait till the banks opened to get some money. MG went off to unload, and then head back East, with no sleep.

 

As soon as I got some cash I walked into a seedy hotel near the Railway and asked the barmaid, “Is this the cheapest hotel in Perth.” A drunk asleep at the bar, or so I thought, lifted his head and slurred, “No mate, you want the Shaftsbury.”

 

The Shaftsbury was like something out of  Herzog movie. There was a dwarf, and a giant man, and a cripple. There were shared bathrooms, and all for $10 a night, or $25 for a week. I should have gone the latter option. What I only found out later, after living with a Musician from Perth, was that shambling old hotel was also the best place for Indie bands in Perth. I was to discover later that evening, after swimming at Scarborough all day, that one of those Indie Band’s was to play just below my head the next night, Melbourne’s Serious Young Insects. I had reached Perth relatively effortlessly so I took a day off, and then got so confident that when I left, I thought I’d hitch back the scenic route, via Albany, adding an extra 1000 plus kilometers to the trip. I came undone. Somewhere in the forests near Pemberton, with the smell of bush fires in my nostrils, I walked across the road, stuck my sign out, and got a lift back to Perth, and checked back into the Shaftsbury for my third night. Contrite, I headed out towards Coolgardie early.

 

Somewhere out past Northam and Meredin, I got a lift in a semi-, without a trailer on. This was the single scariest lift I ever had, and one that I seriously felt that if I asked to get out I would be buried out there in the wheat-belt somewhere. It’s not that he threatened me, it was what he talked about and his action towards other drivers on the road. He could have of course been winding me up, and a lot of what he said I couldn’t hear. I’d smile and nod when he looked at me, and if he then looked perplexed, I’d frown and shake my head. We did this for 500 km. He was a self-confessed murderer and rapist both in Australia and Vietnam. He'd roar up behind someone at 150km/hr and would sit inches behind a car until they panicked and pulled over, and then he would slow down to 60 until they got so frustrated they’d go around them, and then he’d repeat the action. There were a number of heavily loaded mini-buses on the road, a group of Aboriginal elders coming to a conference. He not only tried to run them off the road but when we were stopped at a roadhouse he yelled at them with terribly racist abuse. In the end he went into Kalgoorlie, and I was free. I was scared he would come back out of Kalgoorlie and I’d still be on the road. Fortunately I got a lift quickly.

 

Jack and I, inspired by perhaps the Beats or Tom Robbins, formulated this idea about the Angels of hitchhiking. If you were a heterosexual male, at which we both qualified, then it would be a young woman in a sports car (or two when we hitched together). The chance of getting that lift depended on how much time you sacrificed on the road. I must never have spent enough time standing on the road, because I never got to meet the angels. A friend got a lift with a blonde woman from Berlin to Paris. Another got picked up by two erotic dancers and shagged silly (though he deadlocked himself accidentally in a six storey Brisbane flat when he was supposed to meet them for a continuation of their activities over the weekend). I was picked up by some lovely women, but never asked the question. I was always more interested in moving forward than up and down. Two lovely women took me into Paris, and another drove me out of her way up to the Swiss border.

 

And of course, if there’s angels, there has to be a Devil. Someone who pulls up when you’re having a really hard day and offers you a lift, at a price. The Devil drives a black limousine. Ok, so we weren’t being particularly creative. But we saw the Devil one day. We were hitching down to the Snowies to go climbing at Talbingo. We got to the turnoff out of Cooma, and we were standing there for a while, Everyone was going up to Alps, not over the mountains. The biggest blackest mountains' storm was coming. You could see waterfalls the size of Niagara coming over the paddocks towards us. We were frantically pointing it out to the cars that passed us.

 

While we were waiting, a big black Mercedes with tinted windows pulled up at the T, as if deciding to come our way or go ahead. The Devil. We acted nonchalant and unconcerned by the impending storm. We didn’t need the lift that much. The black car drove on.

 

Nicest car I ever rode in? Possible the 1930s Citroen that picked me up in Fontainbleau and drove me to the outskirts of Paris. I’d wanted only to go ten kilometres but didn’t want to get out of the car. Or, one night in Tamworth, after coming the last 30 kms with a very tired nurse who was falling asleep at the wheel. I would guide the wheel while she nodded, pulling my hand away when she opened her eyes. Another who wouldn’t let me drive, and another car I should have got out of, and another car that dropped me off on the wrong side of Tamworth. I needed a piss and went around the back of a servo where I was accosted by a large Alsatian. I came running back to the road just as a pair of headlights were about to pass. I threw out my hand and the car stopped.  I hopped in, and we took off. I was forced back into the seat.

“So, what kind of car is this then?” I enquired.

“Jensen Interceptor” said the driver. We went up the hills north of Tamworth, the Moombis, at 140km an hour. Most cars struggle to stay over 80. I’ve been up the same hills in a laden truck at 5km an hour. The Jensen was much preferred.

I hitched down to Gippsland to see a girlfriend. I’d just got back from Asia and began to feel really sick, so much that I almost passed out getting out of one car. I got a lift in a hearse. I joked “I’m feeling really sick, do you mind if I lie down in the back?”

He thought that was funny and regaled me with Undertaker jokes, like “Most of my passengers don’t talk to me” and when I commented it was roomy said, “Yes, I have seven people in the front.”

Disbelieving, I asked “7!”

“Yes, me, and six guys in pots where you’re sitting.” Boom/Tish.

 

The obvious question after all this is, ‘If it was so much fun, why did you stop?’

By the end of the 80s, hitchhiking was changing. People started to get more paranoid. I got bigger and uglier. One night, trying to make Castlemaine for Christmas, I was stuck in Mooroopna and everyone was loaded down with children and presents. I reneged and called my father to come and get me. I was 150ks away. I thought later that the perfect thing for hitching on Christmas Eve would be a Santa costume, and disguise your pack as presents and have a deflated reindeer. No kids in the Western world would let their parents go past you.

 

But the end came hitching down to Natimuk after grape picking. I got to Hopetoun in the middle of the Mallee. I stood outside town for two hours. About six cars went past, all loaded with cricket players. I walked back into town and asked if there was a bus to Horsham.

“Oh yes they said.”

“Great,” I said. “When does it leave.”

“Tuesday.” They replied. It was Friday.

 

I wandered into the pub and enquired if there was a train?

“Train hasn’t come through here in 10 years.”

“The cricket team are going down.” Someone pitched in.

“Yes, I saw them.”

I rang my friend Phil, and he took a 400k drive to pick me up. I felt I’d lost my edge. I had a child and bought a car.

 I still hitch occasionally, short distances where I feel safe. And because so many people picked me up, I generally pick up hitchhikers. But they are a poor lot nowadays. I picked up some Koreans and let them camp on my lawn, but they were the exceptions. It’s hard to get a good conversation out of anyone. Because Aboriginal people always picked me up I always return the favour.

 I gave a lift to a guy Peter recently. He was an exception to the current norm. He intrigued me. Late 60s, and he had been hitching around Australia and doing piece work since he was young. He’d just snuck into a roadhouse and had a shower, so his hair was, wet and freshly combed. He knew everywhere I’d lived, and had done some sort of work there. He knew every place he could get a shower and all the places in towns he could get a free feed. I dropped him off in Narrandera to hitch to Wagga where he knew he could get dinner. I felt it only fitting that I should surrender my title to him.