FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! - 27/3/2014-28/3/2014

Me "thumbing" for my first time.

"Work to live, 

don't live to work..."

- Trent

Pacing. At about 5:00am on the 27th, that's exactly what I was doing. It was a mixture of nerves and excitement that were keeping me awake, along with packing and unpacking several times to try and pack as little as possible while still bringing the necessities. For about a week, I'd barely come to terms with what it was exactly that I was doing for three months - sure, hitchhiking to Perth to fly to South-East Asia is a big deal - friends thought so too when I told them about it; but to me it was a distant and intangible thought, like it would turn out after all I wasn't leaving. 

It wasn't that way at all. 

 Farewell party with the fam bam.

Zip-Tie jewelry with my adorable and ingenious cousin, Larni.

That same morning, I was getting shots for various Asian diseases, saying bye to mum with a huge pack on my back, then busing it to central station, to head down to the coast to meed dad. The same morning I was on my own legs; I felt independent like never before, with such a surge it actually made me nauseous.
That night was the first time I'd seen my old man in months. To put it simply, I never felt like I was going to be in bad hands hitchhiking, as he's been doing it and blogging about if for a couple of years now, yet I was still left with butterflies in my gut. We drank some and chatted, and did the same the next morning with the rest of the family. It was very comforting in a way - none of them seemed worried about me like mates were, but then again maybe they weren't saying anything...
So suddenly, there I was standing on the side of the road in a light afternoon drizzle with my old man, like the last 36 hours had been a mere 30 seconds. I was totally at ease - dad and I had talked a bit the night before about taking it easy on my first few rides. He explained to me what "scissoring" was (when two hitchers split up on different parts of the same road to make it easier for them to get rides), and I said I wasn't sure I'd want to do that straight away. He seemed to get it.
I was totally at ease.
About 20 minutes passed with no luck and dad said "I'm heading up the road a bit. When you tell people where you are going, tell them you are going to Maffra, which is near Sale. Can you remember that?"
I was no longer at ease. My heart leaped into my throat.
I pretended to be calm. "Sure dad" I replied with a grin.
"Don't worry about it, I'll see you in ten minutes when you get a ride, and if not, we'll run into each other along the way" he replied, and with that, he walked south until I couldn't see him any more.


It began to rain a little harder, and I started to get a tiny bit uneasy. Fuck, fuck, fuck I kept repeating in my head with every passing car that rejected me outstretched thumb. Another 20 minutes passed until a car finally did pull over - a black land rover with a red bike strapped to the back. Half running after it, I immediately recognized it once it pulled to a complete stop. Mum wound down the window looking a little worried, with the kids in the back seat surprised and my step-father in the front seat next to her, completely amused by the situation. We chatted briefly and I explained where dad was and the idea behind scissoring. She offered me a lift as far as Batemans Bay, where we own a holiday house. In my head I did a quick calculation. It was about three hours from where I was presently, which wouldn't be bad. However, a little voice in my head was yelling "don't get your first ride with your mum!"

As I watched them pull away, another 20 minutes passed and a car finally pulled over. Black 4WD. Black beard. Black sunnies. Scary dude.

Fuck, fuck, fuck I kept repeating in my head as I finally got my first ride. He asked where I was going. "Maffra" I replied "it's near Sale."

"That's inland to the west, not near sale I'm pretty sure"
"oh..." I felt stupid for a moment "how far south are you going?"
"I turn off the the Princess Highway before Milton."
"That'll do. Should I chuck my stuff in the back?"

And so we drove off. Dad was long gone, I had no clue where I was going and I was alive like I'd never been before. I'd shifted from a state of unease to one of absolute pride and confidence. For now I knew I had to head to head to Milton, as there I could at least buy a map of the south Coast to pinpoint exactly where Maffra was.
Me and the black bearded fellow chatted for a bit, (he turned out to be very nice indeed, though I did most of the talking) and as promised he let me out about five kilometers outside Milton. I thanked him and waited for another ride, still wondering when I'd see dad, now more out of curiosity than anxiety. Less than two minutes later, a woman picked me up and took me the rest of the way. We jabbered on about hitching - she was quite fascinated. One thing I did take note of though was that both the people who had picked me up so far had told me they'd also traveled this way before. Things weren't so bad after all, it seemed. Once in town I set off right away to find a map (after thanking my driver). Once I found it, I was immediately confused. The map had Maffra marked on the map to the East of where I was. 

Sale is in Victoria.

Fuck, fuck, fuck I began to think again, as I scoured the map wondering if I was thinking of a different town beginning with "M". All I knew for certain now was Sale, so I decided I'd head there, as it was right on the Highway I was already on, even though it was far. I began to walk again, to try and get out of town where I was more likely to get a ride that was going in the right direction. Before I'd even walked for a minute, a car pulled over in front of me - a nice car this time. When I was loading my stuff into the back seat, the guy kept talking to me, but I couldn't hear him. It turned out this car was pimped out. It had a screen in the dashboard, a phone plugged in somewhere, and he was talking to a mate. He told me he could take me to Batemans Bay. I told him that was perfect. We drove on.
Once he'd finished talking on the phone, he told me his name was Rod, and that he'd hitchhiked before. This was getting weird now. Does everyone hitch at some stage? "If not they should - this is great!" I thought to myself, as we continued having a light conversation on the way to Batemans, where I figured It would be a good plan to use the free WiFi to contact dad via facebook to figure out where he was.

Instead, the wireless was down, the old lady at the counter made me dance and sing for a piece of cardboard and a marker so I could tell passing cars where I was going, and a couple of 15 year old kids asked to get some photos with me.

 They asked me if they could buy some pot off me. 

I told them I was going to ask them the same thing.

I left Maccas with a sign reading "BEGA" (a destination just close enough that people would know it, but still far away enough to test my luck), a slimy cheese burger in my stomach, and another in my food container for later, straight away hitting the road to see if I could make it any farther south. I was looking at my map and figured if an angel was sent to me it was plausible to at least make it as far as Moruya, as it was drawing close to about 4:40. If I didn't get a ride, I was going to see if I could stay with the family for the night, as they were staying down the road that night, and dad had said it was usually a god time to start setting camp around six. I'd feel guilty for not going bush, but at least I'd be dry, and comfort was more important to me than pride at the present time. However, I was in luck, with my pride well in tact. A red ute pulled up, and i ran up to it. "Where you headed?" I asked, a question that was no longer frightening to me. any more.
"Bega" my angel replied.

His name was Trent, and we had an awesome chat the whole way down to Bega, which took a couple of hours, even when I noticed his speedometer hit 120 in 100 zones. We talked about my uni course, hitchhiking, politics, Nazi reptillians from Uranus and God knows what else. He was very cool. When we talked about his work he told me he was a plumber, and with that he said "It isn't an amazing job, but it gets me by." he lit a cigarette and offered me one. I accepted, and as I lit my first drag he said "Work to live, don't live to work."
I wasn't going to forget it, but I wrote it down anyway.

At this point it looked like I'd camp alone tonight. I found Maffra on the map, and it turned out there was a second town with the same name in the far south, a couple of k's north of Sale, just as dad said. To put it simply, any doubts and fears I'd had before were completely gone - in fact, I'd never felt so good in my life.
And that was when I saw him as we pulled into Bega. 6'5, a large green bag with an Aussie flag on it and a sign that read "South". It was too perfect, and I was laughing so hard.

Dinner was half a cheeseburger each, with sugar and oats, red wine and lemonade, and some cans of Woodstock I'd been saving for our first night camping. We picked a field covered in old cow shit, well hidden in the dark of the night, we set up our tents, and laughed about the people who had told dad they'd seen me before they picked him up because they felt guilty. We sat for a bit when dad asked if i wanted to go into town to find an IGA or some form of super market. I said sure, wondering to myself if anything would be open. It was only 800, but you never know. We trudged into town, and the place was alive with drunk kids, pub music, bogans and the like. Some woman asked for two bucks on the way to the Coles, and when we told her we had no change, she proceeded to call us racists because we wouldn't give an apparently "black" woman change. Dad and I both agreed that we'd seen white kids in this town whose skin were much darker than hers. Pfft. Bum, I thought to myself.

Then this happened:

 Me holding the dumpster lid open while dad 

rummaged through the bin behind Coles, Bega.

Disclaimer: All food taken from the bin was PACKAGED (kinda). What most supermarkets do is take stuff off the shelves they have had for a while when they get new stock in, and chuck it out. Some of it is actually off, or past it's best before date. Most of it isn't - it's actually good food - food that is most likely fresher than what you have in your fridge. And it was FREE!!!
(Sorry mum ;) I'm still completely healthy if it makes you feel better hehehe...)

It is a VERY wasteful society we live in. On the way back to camp, the "black" woman had a go at us for "lying" to her about having no money when we had clearly "bought" all these fresh groceries, and how we were "racist". That night we ate tomato and basil sandwiches on soft whole grain bread, with a half a rock melon each. She was just too lazy to get her own.