The Long Hitch Home Read online

  Mark and I continued on the road until twilight, pulling off after spotting an old abandoned cattle shed in the distance, accessible on a bumpy red-sand track. Even before stepping from the comfort of Mark’s truck, it was clear the area had an eerie atmosphere. It would have to do though, we needed to set up camp before dark and could use the shed to hide Mark’s vehicle behind so our presence was undetectable from the road. We got out together to investigate the shed, both coming to an abrupt halt when no more than two steps inside it.

  Bullet holes riddled the creaking tin walls and roofing, through which the remainder of the evening’s faint twilight filtered, bestowing on the chilly interior the appearance of a murky nighttime sky with faintly glowing stars.

  “This place feels spooky,” stated Mark.

  I concurred.

  We pitched our tents outside and got a fire going. When nightfall arrived I cooked up another damper bread for supper, while Mark got stuck into some of his more convenient pre-packaged supplies. Not long after, we turned in for the night.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, an almighty crash inside the shed jolted me awake to a panicked state of high alert.

  “What was that!” exclaimed Mark from his adjacent tent.

  We scrambled out of our little domes and ran to the shed.

  Mark was first to reach it, shining his flashlight in before taking a tentative step inside. I joined him.

  It was empty, filled with nothing but the same creepy atmosphere.

  We headed out to check the surrounding area.

  “Could have been a black fella out here,” concluded Mark, scanning about the landscape with the beam of his flashlight, highlighting random bushes for a closer inspection.

  I wasn’t so sure. On several occasions I’d camped in areas where deer or other mammals had gone past my tent in the dead of night and startled me awake. In such a confused state they had sounded just like humans, but then after hastily unzipping my tent I had discovered they were anything but. Most likely a kangaroo had got inside the shed through one of the gaping openings in its walls, then bumped into something and departed before we arrived.

  But I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d heard too many horror stories of serial killers in the outback for that. And so, although I didn’t sleep with one eye open, I made sure my camping knife was close to hand.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Darwin Dilemma

  Suddenly a cloud burst overhead, setting off a battle between raindrop and wiper for the vacant territory of the windshield. Uzi-like rapid-fire liquid bullets peppered the cool glass surface, as the wipers frantically swatted back and forth in a valiant attempt to halt the rain’s advance and re-establish visibility. The wipers gained but fleeting advantage, only to be inundated a millisecond later by a deluge of kamikaze-like reinforcements. It was a close fought fight, and one that broke out increasingly often the further we went north.

  It had taken us another day and a half of solid driving, including a night stop at a campsite in the town of Katherine, to get within striking distance of our final destination, Australia’s northern most coastal city, Darwin. We had stopped off at some thermal springs and a beautiful gorge along the way, and by now the parched desert landscape had faded out, replaced instead by a lush tropical savannah woodland, which was, if anything, suffering from too much water. This is often the way of it in Australia. One extreme or the other. At this very moment, three quarters of the eastern state of Queensland was declared a disaster zone due to horrendous flooding. Its capital city, Brisbane, had seen over thirty suburbs submerged and thousands forced from their homes. The State’s premier described the reconstruction task as being of “post-war proportions.”

  Mark and I finally pulled into Darwin around lunchtime, and said our goodbyes in the city’s uninspiring modern center. Darwin was just how I remembered it. A dump.

  Stepping out of Mark’s vehicle, one of the first things I saw was a huge black pickup truck drive past with a big window sticker in the shape of the Australian map, within which was written: “FUCK OFF WE’RE FULL!”

  Australia may be many things, but full it ain’t.

  My priorities today were simple: find a boat out of here.

  After a reluctant check-in at a local backpackers’ hostel, I took a quick shower, had a shave, and generally spruced myself up by means of a shirt and dress pants, in readiness to visit one of the city’s two yacht clubs. I wanted to make inquiries at the Darwin Sailing Club to find out if anyone was planning a trip across the Timor Sea any time soon, and to post a flyer on their noticeboard asking for crew work in the event that such a yachtsman existed.

  Darwin Sailing Club is situated right on the beach in an area called Fannie Bay, about fifteen minutes by bus from the city center, where it overlooks the waters of the Beagle Gulf. Beyond lies the Timor Sea, that pesky stretch of water that separated me from the next feasible chunks of land—East Timor or, slightly further to the east, the Indonesian Island of Bali. Either would be fine by me. At only four hundred miles across the water, East Timor was significantly less than I had sailed from Hobart to Sydney, so distance wasn’t an issue; the problem was the weather. Cyclone season was in full swing in the tropical north, a time of year (October to March) when, generally speaking, no one dared negotiate the route. (Being in the temperate south of the country, the race from Sydney to Hobart is unaffected.) Would anyone be foolhardy enough to risk it now? And if so, would they need crew? I wasn’t optimistic. With zero commercial ferries leaving Darwin, the only other possibility was to approach a container ship. But no matter how much of a long shot finding a yacht seemed, I was here now, so it was damn well worth a go; and I intended to try every available option.

  Swaddled in sauna-like tropical humidity, by the time I reached the yacht club my shirt was drenched in sweat. So much for looking dapper. I stepped into the plush interior and headed for the bar, uncharacteristically blowing some money on a Coke—more than I’d spent on food the last day and a half, having again made do with damper bread. Several locals whiled away the afternoon here, so I struck up a conversation with the nearest one, a weathered old mariner, telling him of my desire to get a yacht to either East Timor or Indonesia.

  “It’s actually quite simple,” he replied in an optimistic and upbeat manner, as though such a proposition was wholly achievable.

  This was a surprise. I was all ears and suitably encouraged.

  “All you need to find a yacht out of Darwin at this time of year—” he paused for effect, leaving me hanging in suspense, before changing his tone “—is a bloody miracle!”

  Thanks.

  Similar responses came my way from several others in attendance, and after a failed attempt to speak to the club’s commodore, who wasn’t on site, I decided to try elsewhere. Despite the generally pessimistic feedback, I received a glimmer of hope from one of the locals who told me a crazy Frenchman had set off a few weeks earlier from the city’s other yacht club, The Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association, situated on the other side of the sprawling peninsula on which Darwin sat. It was too far to get to before dark so I decided to make inquiries in the morning.

  * * *

  “G’day, Jamie!” enthused a heavily tattooed middle-aged couple whom I had briefly chatted to the day before while waiting for a bus to the first yacht club. They were Tracey and Steve, a cheery and talkative pair of vacationers from the south of the country, who had been making their way to a casino when we first met.

  “How did you get on at the yacht club?” asked Tracey.

  I told them.

  “What about you guys? Did you come out on top?” I asked.

  “Fifty dollars up,” replied Steve with a satisfied grin.

  We chatted for a while about our respective stays in Darwin when suddenly, out of the blue, Tracey had a eureka-like moment of realization.

  “You should go to our hotel for a free feed! They’ve got a full buffet breakfast and no one knows who’s staying.”

  �
��Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, they’re all young staff there who are more interested in checking out the young diners than doing any work.”

  “Jamie,” stated Steve emphatically, “They couldn’t give a rat’s arse!”

  I thanked them for their counsel, got the details of the establishment and headed straight over.

  With the confident air of a long-term resident I strolled into the Cavendish Hotel—or The Cav, as it was billed on a large sign outside. It was an airy, open-fronted establishment, beginning with a decked area of seating and tables leading to an internal courtyard, where a large swimming pool was located. To the right of the decked area was, just as Tracey and Steve had described, the buffet room. No staff or residents were currently inside it, so I headed straight in. Awaiting me was a smorgasbord of culinary delights.

  Retiring with a feast to the decked area, I settled down to an obscenely large breakfast of fresh fruit salad, yogurt, croissants, pastries, muffins and cereals, all washed down with several glasses of juice and a large cup of tea. I took my time, and over my banquet picked up the local paper, NT News, for a perusal of Darwin’s goings on. Splashed across the front page no less, was a big circular red prohibited sign, within which a buxom young lady was showing off her ample assets in a tight fitting wet t-shirt.

  “Is this the end for TOT?” screamed the headline.

  I read on, intrigued.

  Protest to spell the end of TOT? The days may be numbered for one of the Territory’s raunchiest nights out. Discovery nightclub will front the Liquor Licensing Commission next week after a complaint was lodged about its weekly TOT night, the ABC reported. The nightclub claims TOT stands for Tequila On Tuesday, but to locals it is known as Tits Out Tuesday. The event features scantily-clad female patrons dancing on stage often baring their breasts. “We are not strippers so much, just people flashing our boobies,” a patron said.

  And that, I think, tells you just about everything you need to know about Darwin, as does the fact the story warranted the front page lead article, possibly after a frantic “stop the press!” cry at the printers when the story first broke.

  With a satisfied stomach I headed to the city’s Parliament House—an imposing rectangular modern structure, with a gleaming white façade and a flat roof, located within an orderly little park. Here, I knew, free internet was provided in its library.

  It was a building I was well accustomed to.

  It’s got to be said, when previously marooned in Darwin I didn’t really have the best of times. Thanks to getting scammed by the aforementioned fake checks, I’d arrived there so out of pocket that on Christmas day my only meal was a bowl of Weet-Bix cereal, served with, and I’m not making this up, water—I simply couldn’t afford any milk. So when I entered Darwin’s parliament just after Christmas for one of my regular email checks, and was greeted there by the sight of distinguished-looking guests milling around the building’s grand hall while attentively being served glasses of wine and assorted canapés, I decided to try my luck.

  I didn’t exactly look the part, being dressed in a surf t-shirt and shorts, and would have been hard pushed to look any more different from the other smartly turned-out guests, who included several high ranking military officers in crisply pressed uniforms. But what the hell, it was worth a go. Doing my best to remain incognito, I ambled around the opulence of the grand hall’s high-ceilinged, marble-floored interior, stuffing as much food and drink as I could get down my neck in readiness for when someone had the good sense to ask me to leave. Nobody did.

  Much free food and booze later, feeling pleased with myself as well as tipsy, one of the guests, a high ranking American military officer with a shirt full of striped rectangular commendation ribbons, got up on a small makeshift stage to address the assembled dignitaries.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said gazing out across the hall at the cream of Darwin’s society, luckily not spotting me in the process, “I’d like to raise a toast to our dearly departed friend, George Brown.”

  Bloody hell. I’d crashed a funeral! This was a first, even for me.

  I made a swift exit to the library, sending an email there to my brother in which I recalled my funeral wake antics. The following day a friend of his from Sydney, to whom my brother had forwarded my email, sent him a scan of an article from national newspaper, The Australian, entitled, “Darwin Toasts Dead Mayor,” in which I warranted a mention:

  Darwin’s lord Mayor George Brown’s favourite tipple, red wine, was the first to run dry at his wake in the Northern Territory Parliament House yesterday. Political, military and judicial leaders, as well as the odd barefoot commoner, accepted an open invitation to have a drink on the territory Government in the parliament’s main hall to farewell Darwin’s longest-serving mayor.

  Back in the library this time, I got straight on to the Internet to look up the town’s major container shipping company, Perkins Shipping, with a mind to pitching someone in authority there with the idea of me traveling on one of their weekly freighters to East Timor. Perkins, I knew, was going to be a very tough nut to crack. I had briefly corresponded with an American woman, Marie, who back in 2001 had managed to get passage out of Darwin on one of Perkins’ ships to the capital of East Timor, Dili. She had written about her trip on a travel blog, which was how I found her email. Her advice was clear:

  Darwin to Dili. Don’t. That’s where everyone gets stuck. And when they get stuck, they start googling. Eventually, they find me and e-mail me. That’s how I know everyone still gets stuck, and that the guys I convinced to take me on that route say no to travelers nowadays.

  Although it seemed unlikely to me that I could convince anyone at Perkins to take another traveler across the Timor Sea, I stood to lose nothing by trying. I scribbled down the name of Perkins’ boss, made a note of the company address and headed on over there.

  Perkins Shipping was based at an industrial wharf, lapped by green and murky waters, to get to which required a sweltering walk through tropical humidity—and a wasted walk at that, with a categorical “no” to passengers boarding any of their ships coming my way.

  My next port of call was the city’s second yacht club, Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association, located further along the coast. It was much more rustic than yesterday’s club, consisting of little more than a marquee-like roof on pillars with open sides, beneath which multiple tables and chairs were arranged. Tagged onto the front of the structure was a small bar.

  I stuck a flyer up on a notice board and went over to the bar to make inquiries. Feeling duty bound to buy a drink, I ordered an ice-cold bottle of Carlton beer and got chatting to the bar manager—a hardy-looking, personable and upbeat middle-aged man named John, the only person currently around. John gave me the low down on the yachting situation and shared plenty of interesting stories of his time working in England as a sheep shearer. His yachting info pretty much mirrored that of the day before: there had been a crazy French bloke who’d left a few weeks back, but no one since.

  “It’s pretty suicidal at this time of year,” he said. “To be honest, I shouldn’t think you’ll find anyone.”

  “What if I offered someone ten thousand dollars to take me?”

  He laughed. “Now that’s a different story. Just when is it you want to leave, Sir?”

  I explained my odd inquiry. When searching online for ways across the Timor Sea I had happened upon a travel blog of someone who’d worked on board a private yacht chartered out of season by the BBC for ten thousand dollars, so that their travel show presenter—a well known travel writer with a penchant for motorcycles—could get across in the other direction without flying.20

  I bade John goodbye with a promise to check in daily for any updates, just in case another crazy Frenchman arrived on the scene.

  Back in the town center I picked up a most welcome email. With a view to avoiding a protracted stay in a hostel, I had previously sent a number of prospective emails to the Darwin members of a website I had us
ed when traveling in Venezuela, couchsurfing.org. This wonderful site puts travelers seeking free accommodation in contact with travel-minded locals willing to open up their home and provide somewhere to crash. I had an offer from a member of the Australian Navy. Using a public pay phone I called the couchsurfer, and come the evening met with him at a watering hole in town.

  “Welcome to Darwin,” exclaimed a big athletic and enthusiastic sailor in a tight black t-shirt, thrusting out a meaty hand to shake.

  This was Carl, who was accompanied at the bar by a similarly proportioned naval colleague, Mike. We hit it off immediately, with both possessing a quick-witted, dry sense of humor, and a love for multiple ice cold beers.

  After finishing up at the bar, we headed back to Carl and Mike’s apartment. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer place. It was clean, commodious and modern, with a spacious open-plan sitting room and kitchen, off which were the guy’s bedrooms. Through the open door of one could be seen a big Marilyn Monroe poster above the bed.

  “Dump your pack by the couch,” said Carl. “It folds out as a bed, I’ll set it up for you later.”

  Next to this was a coffee table with an interesting item on top of it: a samurai sword.

  “D’you wanna take a shower or fancy a cuppa?” asked Mike.

  I did indeed, and went for both in that order.

  This is what I love about couchsurfing. I barely knew these guys, but simply by sending an email to Carl, I had scored a nice roof above my head from a couple of first rate hosts.

  “Help yourself to a cupcake,” offered Carl, as we drank our teas leaning against the kitchen’s marble work surface. I selected a delightful little sprinkle-covered chocolate one from a tray nearby, next to which, by contrast, resided a jet-black pistol.

  Carl picked up and cocked the weapon.

  “Want a look?” he asked, offering it my way, before quickly adding, “don’t worry, it’s decommissioned.”

  Several photos of me packing a piece in one hand and a nice cup of tea in the other followed, after which we settled down to a pizza. Over the meal the guys told me a bit about their experiences in the Navy and of their plans to soon depart from it. Neither sounded particularly enamored by their time thus served.