Past the Stars
Five kilometres. That's the furthest I'd ever hitched - from the righthand wedge in my home town out to the back beaches once the northerlies blew up come summer time. Back then it was all about finding offshore waves and I had my board, towel and backpack along for the journey. This time it was about needing to break out of the city and wanting to meet some of the people living out in the guts of this land. No board for this trip and I forgot a towel, but there were a few shirts in my backpack, a map, the kid's game Barrel Of Monkeys, my mobile, a black texta and some scraps of cardboard for a sign. All that was left to do was stick out the thumb. Easy.
Actually, there were a couple of worries before we got started. Not about being touched by truckers with rough hands or being robbed, butchered and buried in a state forest. Nothing that dramatic. Our main concern was, simply, what if no one stopped to pick us up? What if we had to ring a mate from a pay phone come night fall and beg for a ride back home - the dream of having a succession of strangers stop to drive us across the country, stealing their stories along the way, swatted outside a secondhand furniture store near the turn to Cabramatta, three pissy kilometres from where said mate had dropped us that morning.
We figured we could handle the gruelling hours in compact cars. The Nullarbor. The freaks. AM radio. Heart-clogging truck stop food. Even the incessant glare from the locals in outback pubs. But the shame of not being offered a single lift? Luckily, we never had to face that fear. A dozen rides in six days, covering the 4552 kilometres between Sydney and Perth took care of that.
Name: Greg.
Wheels: Ford Fairlane.
Length Of Ride: Liverpool (Sydney) to Bargo - 51km.
Greg looked like a bushranger and acted the way I imagine one might have too. "Get the fuck in! he yelled through the window. "Quick! Before! the bloody lights turn!" Two hundred metres ' (back up the road a red light did its best to hold three lanes of morning traffic.
Greg had past us once but with no lane to pull over decided to race ahead, hook a u-turn, double back and wait for the arrow at the intersection that had just released hundreds of car sitraight for us. No time to pull the bags from our backs, we jumped in and Greg lit the tires.
"No one would have ever stopped along that road for you guys," he said. "Thought I better come back."
Window rolled part way down as an exhaust for his cigarette, Greg's beard rocked in the wind.
Name: Loraine.
Wheels: Toyota Camry.
Length Of Ride: Bargo to Melbourne - 825 km.
Thirty minutes on the road and I knew this about Loraine: she grew up in country Victoria. Her mum wanted her to become a nurse, just like she'd done, but Loraine had plans of her own. Finished with school, she cruised New Zealand with a surfer boy for a few years. Lived in Fiji. Worked in real estate on the Gold Coast, in a Sydney solicitor's office and for a radio station on the Central Coast of NSW. Thirty-seven jobs in her 55 years, including the bookkeeping she continues to do for an internet based company. Been all over Canada, Europe and Australia. Previously married. No kids. Likes to drive between 10 and 15 clicks above the recommended speed limit.
She needed to be in Geelong, an hour outside of Melbourne, as soon as possible. Doctors had sent word her mum wasn't doing well. Bone cancer. She needed us to share the drive otherwise she'd have! To pull up in Yass for the night. Precious hours wasted on a cheap motel where she might have rested, but after that kind of call, was never going to sleep. "My father would kill me if he knew I'd picked up two boys," she said after sinking into the passenger seat for a break.
We were still four hours out when Loraine's mobile rang. She spoke into in with calm, measured sentences, hung up and said it was her brother. She probably wasn't going to make it in lime. "I guess I could think of myself as lucky in a way", she said after a heavy silence. "I've made it this far without having to deal with losing anyone in my immediate family."
Approaching lights began to flare and I wished for tiny windscreen wipers for my eyes as I continued driving this well-travelled woman to a place she'd never been in her life.
Full Story in Stab Magazine Issue #04
Story by Rick Bannister, Photos by Phil Gallagher
