When hitchhiking, first impressions are everything. Driving: you have only seconds to judge whether the hitcher might be dangerous, smelly, boring, or all three. Hitching, its not so critical. You would take a lift from the devil if he took you away from that bleak bit of road you have been studying for hours; but then again, you do need a modicum of selectivity.
I was on my way from Sydney to the sugar cane plantations of Queensland. Legend had it that you could earn a small fortune cutting cane, but that it was amongst the toughest jobs in the world. I was a strong but broke 24 yr old. I could maybe last a week of long days in the heat and humidity, amongst the lethal snakes, spiders and toads. That would help the cash flow.
My first few lifts took me way out of Sydney and up the Pacific Highway. Its a mighty motorway now, but in 1967 it was just a single lane of tarmac between wide dirt verges. Meeting oncoming traffic, you pulled over enough to put two wheels on the dirt, and kept the other two on the Tarmac and hoped his wing mirrors didn’t stick out too far. Or that the oncoming car or truck driver wasn’t asleep, drunk, or into playing chicken.
Well into the afternoon, a few lifts out, I thumbed down a large white truck. I didn’t think he was going to stop, but his first impressions must have been okay, as there was the hiss and spit of air brakes, and then I was running down the road to where he had pulled over. My first impressions were mixed; a forty-something driver under the inevitable bush hat, but he was unshaven and looked very very tired. I climbed up and we talked; shouting over the din of the engine. I told him I was a Ten Pound Pommie, and he shook his head at the stupidity of his government. He asked what I did, and I told him that I used to run a small transport outfit, back in Britain.
‘You’re a driver! Beauty Mate’ he exclaimed and pulled the truck over.
‘I’ve driven up from Melbourne, he told me. I’m done over. You can drive.’
He climbed out, and I had little option but to clamber over the enormous protruding gearbox into the driver’s seat.
Now, I had driven the odd middle-size HGV back in England; but nothing like this. I’d like to pretend that it was a Mack, and a road train at that. It wasn’t, but was enormous to me. The wing mirrors were the size of tea trays, the wheel a vast horizontal dish and the gearstick a long thing that disappeared somewhere behind me. The clutch took all my strength to operate and went down, and back an awful long way.
‘It’ll take me a while to get into this again,’ I said nervously; fearful of being exposed as a Pommie Bullshitter.
‘No worries, mate. I’m going to have kip. Stop when we get to Maryborough.’
He pulled his hat over his eyes and went out like a light.
I muscled the clutch down and stirred around in the gearbox. There were some nasty grating noises, but after de-clutching, the lever found a slot and we kangarooed forward. I don’t know how many gears the thing had, or indeed how many I sampled. Happily there wasn’t much on the road, and few townships. Oncoming cars got out of my way; for trucks I duly put all my nearside wheels on the dirt. I have no idea how many of those wheels there were. We eventually got to Maryborough without incident.
The driver, thanked me, as I did him, and he went on his way. I massaged my aching leg muscles, breathed a sigh of relief, and started thumbing again.
More trucks, the odd ute, and smooth sedans swished by, ignoring my winning smile and hopeful thumb. It was getting dark. I contemplated having to sleep in a ditch – I had no money at all; but:
No worries, it would be all-found on the cane fields.
Then, along came a small brown flat-bed truck. First impressions were that It could have come straight from a car museum, or perhaps from featuring in an old black-and-white western. It had a vertical mesh radiator, vertical windscreen, tiny headlamps, artillery wheels and wings sweeping into big wide wooden running boards. Slung on the front bumper was a canvas bag with a tap attached; drinking water kept cool by the flow of air. It came to halt with a groan of brakes. The driver was even older than his truck. A small man with an earthy tan that made him as brown as his vehicle; which on closer examination was actually green. But now, a combination of rust and caked-on red dust, inside and out, masked its original colour.
I was waved into the passenger seat; a steel shell, long shorn of its upholstery, apart from a pile of sacks. The driver mouthed that he was heading north, but had to detour off the Pacific Highway for an hour or two to make a call.
I avoided telling him I was a truckie, but asked what was the truck; a Model T? A Chevvy or what?
‘She’s a Rolls, mate’ he said.
I didn’t think so, but didn’t want to be rude.
He asked where I was from. “Beg yours?” he said. “No mate. you’re not a Pom’. I protested. ‘Nah, could be a Kiwi; probably a South African I reckon’. I had only myself to blame, I half-consciously had been trying to tone down my English accent.
‘Your folks know where you are? No? anyone know where you are? Anyone at all?’
It was getting dark, sunsets in Oz are short and sweet. He was bent over his wheel. I thought he looked a bit rat-like. Short but not sweet.
‘Bad idea. You should always leave word of where y’re going out here.’ He offered me a beer from a bag on the floor, and had one himself.
‘Yeh; a Rolls!’ he went on.
I nodded despite the blatant untruth.
‘A Rolls Canardly’ he added.
That’s interesting, I said, stressing my English accent. ‘ I haven’t heard of a Rolls Canardly.’
Yeh mate, – he said – Rolls down the hills, and can ‘ardly get up the other side!’
He laughed long and loud almost choking on his beer.
There was quiet for a while, then he started again.
‘First rule, out here, always leave word where you’re going, then get to a phone and tell them you’ve arrived OK. First rule. OK mate?’
I agreed.
‘There’s still gangs out here, ye know? Bushwhackers. They keep quiet about it, don’t wanna scare off the tourists. But plenty of gangs after what they can get.’
There was a long pause.
‘Chap like you; tourist. Carrying loads of cash. No problem.’
It was dark now, the headlights just managing to light up big white paper moths with a yellow glow, the red dirt country road stretching away into the featureless bush.
I told him I had no cash, and that was why I was going for a job on the cane fields.
‘ You don’t want to do that, mate’ he told me. – ‘snakes, spiders, poison toads; all out to get you. And that’s apart from the bosses, the other pickers and the bushwhackers!’ He cackled, chucked his beer bottle out of the window, and grabbed another.
We drove for hours. Touched 40 sometimes. Long silences, and then he would start up again. He told me of people disappearing without trace, about gangs hiding out in the bush, living on the land. He went on and on about how much money I must have, and how you should always let people know where you were and where you were going – otherwise, ‘how they gonna find you, mate? Or what’s left of you?’
‘You know what an optimist is, mate?’ – He asked. ‘ A backpacker with a return ticket!’ His cackling laugh would end in a series of chesty coughs.
He looked more rat-like in the gloom.
I must have dozed off, he was pulling off, onto the side of the road. It was cold.
‘Don’t ever say, I didn’t warn you, mate’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
He said nothing, and didn’t look me in the eye, but reached behind my seat.
He pulled out a rifle.
‘Out of the door’ he said. ‘I warned you.’
He jabbed me hard in the ribs with the gun. ‘Out’ he shouted ‘Out, out, out!’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘Don’t be silly’, I said.
‘Don’t fucking tell me not to be fucking silly!’ He was shouting at the top of his voice now.
I slid sideways out of the door. He followed me, with surprising agility. The gun was pointed at my chest. He would occasionally lunge with it, jabbing me painfully.
‘I told you!’ he said, as if it justified what he was doing. ‘Loads of cash on you. Put your hands behind your neck.’ I obeyed, ‘ Walk backwards over there’. I did, but my knees were weak, and, Oh no! I felt in urgent need of a crap.
I wasn’t panicking. Not quite. My brain was churning over between disbelief and wondering whether I could grab the muzzle of the gun before it went off. I had fear, but there was also deep anger and indignation.
It was dark, but it was an amazing night with thousands of stars. He had backed me off close to a ditch running alongside the road.
‘Kneel down’ he said.
He seemed very agitated, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Staring rat-like eyes glaring angrily at me. The gun waving around, but always pointing at my chest. His finger on the trigger. Time seemed to be slowing down.
I had often wondered why, in the war, thousands of Jews were herded to where they dug their own graves, and did not run, or rush their guards, but just waited for death until the Nazis murdered them. I know why now. Where there is life there is hope. You just refuse to believe that this is happening to you. I’m sure its nature’s sedative; you just go on kidding yourself. It’ll be OK.
That’s what I did. But I was angry too. Maybe because of having endured, then finally overcoming, vicious childhood bullying, made me resistant.
‘Kneel down’, he insisted, jabbing at me again. I stared at him. There was silence.
‘I’m not going to do that.’ I said. I don’t know if my voice was trembling. I lowered my hands from behind my neck and stared at him.
He backed away a bit, raised the gun. Glared at me, feinted a jab with the gun. I don’t know how long we stood there like that. Then he sort-of grinned. He nodded at me, then lowered the gun.
‘OK mate; lesson learnt. I could have had you, taken your cash. No one would find you for months. So, you watch out, mate. Its bloody dangerous out here. You keep your folks aware of what you’re doing and where you’re going.’
I nodded, unable to speak. Buttocks clenched. Shivering a bit, tho’ it wasn’t cold.
‘Right, mate. I’ve got to re-fuel the Roller. I wasn’t kidding about the gangs, they’ll be watching, so you keep watch while I re-fuel, and if anything moves, shoot first and ask later!’
He passed me the rifle; it was heavy.
‘Up on the cab,’ he gestured.
So thus it was that I ended up standing on the rusty roof of the old Chevvy, if that’s what it was, at two in the morning somewhere in Queensland, holding the gun and squinting around into the undergrowth, while he siphoned fuel from a 50 gallon drum into the truck’s tank.
‘Not like that!’ he shouted. ‘ How you going to hit anything like that?’ I was holding the rifle at my hip. He made me hold it up to my shoulder, and turn around to cover all directions. Nothing moved. There were no distant lights. Just brilliant starlight and total silence. Eventually he finished, and had a pee into the ditch.
We motored on, me subdued, shivering, and angry; him chuckling from time to time, occasionally lobbing an empty stubby beer bottle out of the window. Other broken bottles glittered in the headlights as we drove.
‘They call this the Pearly Way’ he told me.
It was probably gone three in the morning when we pulled into the small township where he lived.
‘You can sleep here, and I’ll take you back to the Pacific Highway in the morning, and I’ll give you my phone number to ring me tomorrow night. Right?’
The bed was more sacking in his shanty; beaten earth on the floor. I slept like a log. Too early he woke me with a pint of sweet tea, and I had a good scratch and rinsed off in a bowl outside, fed from a corrugated-iron water tank.
He cooked us an amazing fry up; probably my most appreciated breakfast until that one in Lowes Hotel in Monte Carlo, thirty years later. (Another story).
True to his word, he taxied me out a few miles and dropped me off at a good hitching place back on the Pacific Highway. Before he left, I got another strict lecture and his phone number.
He drove off down the road, and did a U-turn to bring him back past me, the way we had come, stopping opposite where I was standing. He had another beer in his hand, and he was laughing.
‘Hey mate, I was kidding! You didn’t half look funny standing up on the roof with that old gun! Hasn’t been fired in years – all rusted up it is! Learned you yr lesson tho’ didnt it?’
He waved, and drove off chortling, leaving a cloud of red dust and blue smoke behind him, his laugh ending with a fit of coughing. Maybe he enjoys telling the story too, if he survived that cough, and the bushwhackers.
His words were prophetic when, the same week, a gunman attacked caravanners just a few miles further north; and again, years later, when back packers were murdered on the Stuart Highway between Darwin and Alice.
I didn’t phone him, on arrival, a day and a few lifts later in Mackay. I had no money at all for the phone box, and was trying to work out what you did, after you had just spent your very last dollar on breakfast, after sleeping in a ditch, despite the snakes and spiders and toads, and after learning that there were no jobs.
PT 15 May 2019. 2474 wds.
