The road home

I HITCHED home from Darwin in four days. I googled the distance and found this answer:

“The road distance between Melbourne and Darwin is around 3752 kilometres. The journey would take approximately 45 hours, so would best be undertaken over a minimum of 5 days.”

I won, and without a car! Here are some other non-vital statistics…

7: different lifts

6.5: hours waiting by the road

97: roadkill carcasses (an estimate), attended by

283: contented crows (also an estimate)

13: roadhouse pitstops

18: pee breaks

1185: kilometres covered in the longest lift, from Katherine to Alice Springs

3: hours I drove the (government) car during that ride

2: other hitchhikers we picked up, including the owner of a roadhouse near

1: roadside bushfire we braved, with

5: metre flames on either side of the vehicle

1: crocodile-skin vest, borrowed from

1: itinerant tree-dweller named ‘Bushy’

20: hours in the longest driving day, from Coober Pedy to my door

1: free lunch given to me by picnickers in Port Augusta

1,3 &5: the only functioning gears in the backpackers’ bombed out Nissan Pulsar (no reverse)

1: stop by the police highway patrol, and

0: charges laid

It all adds up to…

1: happy traveller/tree-dwelling protégé