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Hitching Down Under: Still a Very Happening Thing

© Bernd Wechner

I'd hitched Europe, I'd hitched Asia, I'd hitched New Zealand but I'd never hitched at home, in the land of Oz. I'd always had transport back home — a car, a motorcycle, friends going my way.

I started hitching in foreign countries where these things weren't at hand. But I've grown to love it, not as a way of merely getting around, but as a source of adventure, contact with the indigenous folk, and a challenge to the growing conservatism in the modern world. So when I had to go to back to Adelaide for a conference I decided to leave my worldly vehicles at home and thumb my way over, and back, from Kiama near Sydney, where I was crashed at the time (while working as a technical consultant to an old boss and friend of mine). I took a month off to colour the trip with a little meandering around the country as well.

Well, that was the plan. My motivation was under siege though. I shared my dreams with friends and colleagues, every one of whom expressed their reservations or questioned my sanity. One friend of mine says to me "Bernd, I've got two words for you: Ivan Milat!" That just about summed it up. Ivan Milat was the straw that broke the camel's back, or so to speak. Into a country already on the road towards paranoid conservatism, comes this sole angel of death who knocks off seven hitch-hikers in a forest not far from my home. Ouch. What power has the small voice of reason against such emotive crimes?

But my hide was saved to speak by an old buddy back in Adelaide. I rang Mark just to let him know I was coming and shared with him my plan to hitch, and my wavering confidence on account of siege on my senses by fearful (though caring) friends. Mark revealed a side to his character I'd never been aware of: he'd hitched all the way around Australia himself, including the Nullarbor, and Western Australia, and swears by it. "Do it man!" he breathes down the phone at me, "just do it!" Adding fuel to the fire, Mark tells me he hitched right past Milat's forest graveyard at about the same time Milat was active, but got through unscathed. Water off a ducks back to the ardent hitcher. These are the risks we accept before we start, and shit happens . . .

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