Reciprocal Hospitality: Thursday, 4th August, 1977

On the 23rd of December, 1971 I departed from my place of lodging with the intention to ride my relatively new pushbike to Melbourne. The whole ill-conceived notion had really been based on a whim from which I then found myself unwilling to abandon.

That day, and the twenty-fourth, had a maximum of eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The highway became dangerously narrow and all too often undulating. The unavailability of drinking water became another concern the farther south I rode and by the time I had pushed my bike up the seemingly endless hill and into Milton, the only thing I wanted to do was to sell it.

This, I managed to do at the local newsagency for fifty dollars, which was almost a half of what I had paid for it. Nevertheless, I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

A lift, by chance, from an elderly couple who had just so happened to have been in the barber’s when I had enquired as to where I might find a buyer, conveyed me to nearby Ulladulla.

An approaching thunderstorm was to result in me standing in torrential rain at the top of the hill in the main street, as I attempted to hitchhike for the first time in my life.

Perhaps half of an hour passed before, in the ever increasing darkness, a young man stopped for me. He was travelling to Narooma to spend Christmas Day with his parents at the local caravan park.

That evening, he took me from caravan to caravan as we partook of Christmas drinks with people whom he knew and that night I was permitted to sleep on the grass inside the annexe of his parents’ caravan. My preceding night had literally been a sleepless one, spent in the bush beside the highway, and despite my ‘mattress’ being nothing but the grass I was to sleep like the proverbial log.

Lunch on Christmas Day consisted of six potato scallops from a fish and chip shop in Bega. The night was spent in that town, too, due to an approaching thunderstorm. It resulted in me entering reception at a motel, wringing wet, and the spending of what I thought was an exorbitant eight dollars and fifty cents to stay for the night.

At least, I woke refreshed on Boxing Day and was to soon learn that my good fortune had not deserted me, as an elderly couple from Kiama were to transport me hundreds of miles to Warragul, Victoria. There, ensued another sleepless night as I lay on a lengthy wooden seat, at one end of a goods waggon, and listened to my transistor radio.

My pulse had discernibly quickened around midnight when two men with torches inspected the railway’s premises but, perhaps fortunately for me, did not shine them in my direction.

Having seen enough of Melbourne, a few days later I embarked on the 7.30p.m. ferry bound for Devonport, Tasmania, some fifteen hours distant. New year’s Eve was spent in that state’s second city, Launceston. The highlight of my visit to Tasmania was that of being offered a lift by a Hobartian family who took me fishing for flathead on the Derwent, but not before I had spent two of three nights at their weekender, in Eaglehawk Neck, where I was fed on lobster, and strawberries and ice-cream.

The parents’ son had been shown similar hospitality when he had visited a cattle station in the Northern Territory some years previously and they had felt that such generosity should be reciprocated. Tragically, cancer had since claimed his life.

My hitchhiking actually conveyed me to Adelaide, South Australia, where a couple of friendly lads from New Zealand wanted me to travel on to Perth, Western Australia. However, they were travelling in a 1957 Holden and I was unsure as to whether it would withstand the Nullarbor Plain at the height of summer. Nor did I wish to find myself that far from home with limited funds.

In total, I travelled for nearly six thousand miles and spent nine of the fifty-four days in private accommodation.

Here are just a few of my photographs from that venture:

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The coastal landform known as London Bridge is located along The Great Ocean Road in Victoria

 

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A view along The Great Ocean Road between Warrnambool and Port Campbell, Victoria

 

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Arthur’s Circus in Hobart, Tasmania

 

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Cat And Fiddle Clock, Hobart

 

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An industrial site along the polluted Derwent River, Hobart, Tasmania

 

“The Garry McDonald Show” followed “Peach’s Australia” on Channel Two, but as it did not impress me I turned the dial to Channel Ten, at nine o’clock, and watched the second half of “Number 96”. The movie, “How To Break Up A Happy Divorce”, from 1976, is on television tonight from half past ten until midnight. It stars Barbara Eden and Hal “Barney Miller” Linden.

 

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