twogirls

I recently hitchhiked with a friend. It was the first time in ages I’d hitched with someone other than Jo.

Our first lift was with Allan, a truckdriver of 18 years. On average he reckons he sees one hitchhiker a month. One in 12 of these is a woman, usually travelling on her own.

We got a lift with a fruitpicker driving to Shepparton. He had come to Australia six years ago from Afghanistan. He spent three months in Woomera and is waiting for his wife to join him in Australia.

He played us some traditional Afghani music followed by Delta Godrem. The Afgani music wasn’t on for long before he changed to Delta, saying she was better, even though we insisted we liked the other music more.

Breana had many hitchhiking techniques and theories. She liked to wave at every driver that made eye contact with her in order to demonstrate that hitchhikers were friendly folk. These drivers might stop for a hitchhiker next time, thus advancing the cause of hitchhiking.

She also liked to put the bags further up the road than she stood so that they would be closer to the car when someone stopped. With this system in place, she would perform her most special move to try to get a lift - the ‘hopeful walk back towards the bags’. While hitching, she would make eye contact with drivers and walk backwards to where the bags were.

Despite all this we didn’t make it from Melbourne to Sydney in the same day - a first in all my time of hitchhiking.