I can’t believe I’ve been in Australia for six weeks now. Six weeks. Where has all that time gone?
My first real trip on my own was to Europe in the summer of 2001. I was gone for just over 5 weeks and it felt like a lifetime. It was the first time I had experienced the 24-hour days of the constant stimuli that comes with traveling unfamiliar worlds. It was mindblowing and almost overwhelming. After 5 weeks I was exhausted.
Almost four years later I find myself in quite a different set of shoes. Six weeks pass by here in the magical land of Oz and I feel like I should still be jetlagged. I just got here, didn’t I? Why does the calendar say it’s almost February? How did that happen?
Some of you are probably wondering where I am now (namely Dad). Since the last time I wrote I’ve covered a bit of ground. I left Tom’s house in the lovely Blue Mountains town of Katoomba directly for the thriving metropolis of Bodalla. Er, did I say “metropolis”? Bodalla could be described more appropriately as what my grandfather George would call a “one horse town”. Nevertheless this only added to its charm. Here is where I had the pleasure of meeting its only CouchSurfing residents to date: John and Pam.
But wait a minute, I’m getting ahead of myself. I didn’t exactly just magically disappear from Katoomba and reappear at John and Pam’s door. That surely would have taken much longer than the nine hours I spent in transit.
Because of rainy conditions I opted to take the 9:25a train out of Katoomba, heading for Sydney. Once in Syd I trained south to the end of the line near Nowra. In the coastal town of Nowra I quickly located some cardboard and had a sign alerting southbound drivers of the Princes Highway of my intentions of being someone’s passenger. Luckily for me I had my first ride before the ink on my sign was even dry.
Alison from Brisbane had never picked up a hitchhiker before and had never planned on starting. For some reason that even she couldn’t explain she stopped for me anyway. I’m always amazed when single women stop for a strange man standing near the motorway wanting to ride in their car. Even so, I’d say at least one in five of the good people who have stopped for me have been women on their own.
After saying goodbye to Alison at her turnoff an hour or so down the road I was picked up almost immediately by a “pommie” named Brian. This expat was on his way home from showing a local outdoors club his amazing photos of all types of Australian critters. After showing me his pictures spead out on this hood of his truck Brian dropped me off near his home in Temiel just in time for two lawyers on holiday from Sydney to pick me up.
Michael and Christine drove me all the rest of the way into Bodalla. They were a nice couple to talk to and I was sorry the journey ended after just an hour with them. They even took the slightly longer route along the coastal roads to show me the sea when they could have easily stayed on the direct road of the Princes Highway.
Once I got off the train and onto the road I had a great time. I even covered ground faster than I did on the train. What’s the moral of the story?: forget the train, use your thumb!