Although most of the kids travelling the trail wore tie-died garments and beads, relatively few of them were actually hippies. The hippie movement evolved mainly in San Francisco and its adherents practised free love, pacifism, drug use, alternative lifestyles and, at the extremes, the overthrow of the capitalist state. While a few committed individuals continued to follow the hippie creed, by the late 1960s the movement had mostly fallen apart and its outward appearance had become a popular culture fashion style. Most of the long-haired men and lightly clad women seeking spiritual enlightenment, with or without bodily pleasures, in the Middle East and India ended up as accountants, lawyers, doctors and other useful members of society.
The favoured modes of transport along the trail were jointly purchased cars, usually old bangers, campervans and buses. Many people now recall a legendary Magic Bus that took you from Amsterdam as far along the trail as you could afford. But the magic bus did not exist as such: it was basically a booking agency that organised coach travel from place to place along the adventuresome way.
Public transport was another option. The often erratic nature of these systems suited the carefree ethos and budgets of travellers and brought them up close and personal with local people and their customs.
While many travellers began their journey in London or Europe, Australians often took the trail in reverse. It was just a matter of flying to southern India or elsewhere on the trail and then they were off. Local communities along the trail had quickly adapted to the welcome boost to their economies from these comparatively affluent Westerners and there was a well-developed network of accommodation, travel arrangements and, of course, access to the all-important dope.
The trail was basically a global link between Australia and the northern hemisphere. Australians travelled along it to seek out adventures abroad in an earlier version of today’s backpacking gap year. Or they returned home along it, winding up their year or two or more of expatriation with a last fling before settling down to work, marriage, children and all the banalities of everyday life they had managed to escape for a while.
Often recollected in later life, the journeys made by young Australians in those days can be found in accounts on social media. Many of the elements in the stories are similar: the bus rides; the companions, good and bad; exotic locations; robbery; epic binges on alcohol and marijuana; trouble at borders; tummy bugs; and, invariably, going home when the money ran out.
For all its excess, indulgence and youthful frolics, the hippie trail had its dark side. The French serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese heritage, Charles Sobhraj, specialised in ‘cleaning’ Western adventurers. Born in 1946, the smooth and well-mannered Sobhraj was just the right age to fraternise freely with the young men and women along the hippy trail. He progressed from robbing them to conning them, or both. He is thought to have graduated to murdering them in 1975.
Sobhraj was believed to have murdered at least twelve people when he was caught in 1976. Sentenced to long prison terms, he nevertheless managed to live well inside and through various manipulations of the justice system he was released in 1997. After returning to Nepal in 2003, he was arrested for a murder he had committed there in 1975. He received a sentence of life in prison, during which he has continued his flamboyant attempts to stage-manage the authorities and the media. In September 2014, Sobhraj was again convicted of murder in Nepal. The Serpent, as he has been dubbed, is spending the next twenty years in gaol.
Sobhraj is not known to have murdered any Australians but his intriguing repellence led the artist and journalist Richard Neville to interview him for Oz magazine back in 1975. Neville co-authored a full biography of Sobhraj with Julie Clarke in 1980. The book was a global bestseller and inspired a number of television documentaries. When interviewed for GQ magazine in 2014 Sobhraj expressed no remorse for his crimes.
The hippie trail wound down in 1979 when Iran sealed its borders and Russia invaded Afghanistan. Overland travel was now too dangerous for most, though some of the same generation who blazed the trail, now retired, continue to have intrepid overland adventures, if now following safer routes.
DOING THE DOUGHNUT
Between 1976 and 1984 TV audiences were plagued by an earworm. It was the catchy theme music to one of the country’s most popular shows, ‘Ask the Leyland Brothers’, hosted by Mike and Mal Leyland. In each show the brothers took their four-wheel drives and a camera to places that most Australians had never seen, and probably never would. The adventurous Leylands virtually invented the figure of the television outback adventurer and naturalist, paving the way for the The Bush Tucker Man and Steve Irwin who came afterwards.
They first appeared on Australian screens in 1963, turning their filmed holidays into travel shows that would eventually fascinate millions of viewers. Among many other places, they journeyed along nearly 2500 kilometres of the Darling River system, across Australia through the Simpson Desert, and filmed rain cascading down Uluru for the first time.
Later, their partners Laraine and Margie Leyland featured in the adventures, providing a compelling family holiday feel to the shows. This and the ongoing popularity of Leyland brothers travel films, series and specials are often credited with the invention of a new tribe—the legions of retired baby boomers widely known as Grey Nomads.
Equipped with caravans or increasingly sophisticated campervans, couples over 55 often rent, or sometimes even sell, the family home and just take to the road. Some have definite travel plans, others are content to wander wherever the road leads them.
Although the motorised rambles of the grey nomads are not a single journey, the route they tend to take, either all at once or in different stages, is usually a circuit around the coastline, sometimes known as ‘doing the doughnut’.
At any one moment, countless grey nomads are encircling the entire continent in a never-ending journey that has some similarities to the traditions of ‘beating the bounds’ carried out in many parts of Britain. In these events, there is usually a procession around the parish boundaries or other significant areas through which the rights of the parishioners or villagers are asserted and displayed. These traditions are often several hundred or more years old, while the grey nomad tradition is a relatively recent Australian development. But there is definite sense of the grey nomads, in spirit at least, demonstrating that they belong to the country and that it belongs to them. There is more than a hint of pilgrimage in many of these trips.
Those who take these journeys are often motivated by a desire to see Australia and to travel to places they have heard or read about but never before been able to visit. Often these are iconic locations such as Uluru or the Nullarbor Plain. They may also be attracted by the legends of the bush and Outback, undertaking journeys that favour country towns and the appeal of ‘the wide brown land’. Some now also espouse ecological principles and interests and are keen to experience the great Australian wilderness and perhaps learn something of Indigenous culture.
Others are keen to work. The fruit and vegetable picking industries rely heavily on casual labour supplied by grey nomads. Driving into the local caravan park and working for a week or two, maybe a bit longer, is considered a great way to meet local people, help out with the local economy and provide funds for continuing their travels. Many enjoy volunteering, helping farmers rebuild fences after devastating bushfires or assisting straitened rural communities in other practical ways.
The grey nomad ethos is one of adventure, camaraderie and humour. Grey nomads tend to be independent of mind and although on the road are definitely not disengaged from current affairs, often voicing strong opinions in get-togethers in caravan parks and on social media.
A group ritual is ‘happy hour’. Around mid afternoon the grey nomads roll their outfits into campsites and caravan parks, park, then bring out the chairs and settle in for a getting-to-know-you session fuelled by cups of tea or something stronger.
So numerous are the geriatric gypsies, as some call themselves, that a
whole industry, providing entertainment, travel equipment, guidebooks and maps, has built up around them. Buying the right ‘rig’ or travelling home is a popular topic. Finding work, hobbies to fill leisure time, events of interests, telling stories of their experiences—all these are part of the endless journey of the grey nomads.
7
THE TRACK
I’ve humped my drum from Kingdom Come to the back of the Milky Way.
Bush poem, late nineteenth century
THE ROAD WEST
Almost as soon as Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson struggled across the Blue Mountains in 1813 the fledgling colony of Sydney needed a road to follow the route they’d forged. Fortunately just the man to build it was ready, willing and able: ex-army officer William Cox was around fifty years old when he offered his services to the governor. Lachlan Macquarie nearly fell over himself to accept:
having recently received from you a voluntary offer of your superintending and directing the working party to be employed on this very important service, I now most readily avail myself of your very liberal and handsome offer of superintending and directing the construction of this road; and do invest you with full power and authority to carry out this important design into complete effect, Government furnishing you with the necessary means to enable you to do so.
Cox was given 30 convict labourers and tradesmen and eight soldiers to guard them. They were instructed to build a road from Emu Plains to the newly established settlement at Bathurst. The tradesmen needed for road building were a blacksmith, a shoemaker, a stonemason and carpenters.
The road thus made must be at least 12 ft. wide, so as to permit two carts or other wheel carriages to pass each other with ease. The timber in forest ground to be cut down and cleared away 20 ft. wide, grubbing up the stumps and filling up the holes, so that a four-wheel carriage or cart may pass without difficulty or danger.
Thirdly: In brush ground it is to be cut 20 ft. wide and grubbed up 12 ft. wide. Any small bridges that may be found requisite to be made must be 12 ft. wide. I conceive this to be a sufficient width for the proposed road at present; but where it can with ease and convenience be done, I should prefer the road to be made 16 ft. wide.
On 17 July 1814, Cox mustered his men and equipment, including the purpose-built caravan in which he would sleep along the way. The next day, with the weather clear and frosty, they began cutting a path down the banks of the Nepean River. There were problems with the tools and the provisions but the men worked well and Cox felt that they were setting out making good progress.
By 26 July they were at the foot of the mountains. Now the road builders had to go up. The cliffs were steep and stony, thick with tough ironbarks. One of the superintendents resigned in early August. Two Aboriginal men, Coley, or Coleby, a Darug man, and Joe of the Mulgoa people, joined the group. The weather remained cold but mostly fine and they continued to make good progress, despite increasing sickness among the men as well as accidents, especially from splinters. The sergeant in charge of the soldiers died in late August, from natural causes it seems.
On the night of 8 September the wind ‘blew a perfect hurricane’. But work on the road and bridges needed to cross swollen streams continued well and mostly cheerfully. By late October they had blasted, burned, hacked and grubbed a road out of the unyielding land for almost 40 miles. It was now clear that the road was never going to be very level. The work was slowed down by rains but began again at full speed as October turned into November. For the first time they sighted Aboriginal groups. There was no contact but Cox had the smith make eight pikes for self-defence.
Now the bullocks became a problem. The fresh beasts supplied by the government stores were too wild to harness. The continually damp conditions were also oppressing the men so Cox cheered them up on 3 November with an issue of spirits. But illnesses and accidents increased in the unpleasant weather and rugged conditions.
The crew struggled on, digging, levering, hewing and blasting. By mid November the smith was having trouble keeping their tools in working order, so quickly were they blunting and breaking. There was more cold rain and more issues of grog. The ground was often worse than anticipated and the crew’s bullocks went missing for ten days. But still Cox’s men forged ahead, over creeks, up and down the ridges.
By 8 December, Cox was at the halfway point, near Mount York, about to build the steep descent to the valley below. Some of his men were malingering and he was forced to deliver a dressing-down. Two days later they completed yet another bridge. On 11 December, Cox sent six married men back to complete the mountain descent with orders that they be discharged when they had finished. He and the remainder pushed on, many of his men spending most of the day working in water. They were rewarded with a gill of rum every night. The rains returned but the road thrust forward. By Christmas Day there were three bridges left to build and just another five miles of road. As it was a holiday, each man received the now-customary gill of spirits as well as a new shirt.
By New Year’s Day Cox was finishing a three-day reconnoitre of the area. He was greatly impressed with the country and grazing potential around the Fish River. When he returned he had a bullock slaughtered and the meat given to the men as a welcome relief from the usual salt pork. ‘When the men were mustered this morning they were extremely clean, and looked cheerful and hearty,’ he observed contentedly.
Two weeks later the road was finished. The end of Cox’s way overlooked the Macquarie River in what is now the Bathurst Peace Park. For the time and place it was an engineering triumph, a feat of hard labour and Cox’s logistical and management skills. The road was now open from the coast to the western plains, allowing the expansion of the frontier.
The governor toured the road later that year and pronounced himself pleased with the results. He commended William Cox, Esq. particularly:
for the important service he has rendered to the colony in so short a period of time by opening a passage to the newly-discovered country, and at the same time assuring him that he shall have great pleasure in recommending his meritorious services on this occasion to the favourable consideration of his Majesty’s Ministers.
When it was over there were rewards. Cox received 2000 acres of the western lands now accessible thanks to his and his men’s efforts. His chief assistants were given substantial grants of land and livestock and even Cox’s servant got two cows. The convicts were all pardoned, given tickets-of-leave or emancipated. The Aboriginal men got nothing.
The roadbuilder lived on until 1837, a wealthy man and pillar of the colonial community. His road was added to, changed and subsumed in later developments but can still be seen in places. The longest mostly intact stretch runs over a kilometre along the Old Bathurst Road.
But ease of access was not the only aim for this new road: Cox, his convicts, soldiers and the two Aboriginal men had built a road that finely balanced two competing needs. Like the best thoroughfares, it was designed to allow people and traffic to pass over it in either direction. On the other hand, the governor was under orders from London to control population movements, as the government was keen to regulate land settlement and the advance of the frontier. And Cox’s road was almost impassable in some places, especially on the steep inclines, allowing Macquarie to simultaneously point to a great achievement for his colony as well as dampening a too-rapid population movement inland. A more than satisfactory result for a colonial governor.
ROADS TO RUIN
At the end of each shearing season, hordes of happy shearers made a classic Australian journey. Clutching their swags and a hard-earned cheque for many pounds, they set off from the stations they had called home for a few months and humped their drums back to wherever they had come from in the first place. Most of them had the best intentions of returning to wives and families with enough money to tide everyone over, more or less, until the next season. Some actually made it home. But for many the story, told in the bush song ‘The Road to Gundagai’, had a much less happy ending.
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br /> This particular journey began when a couple of shearers ‘started out from Roto when the sheds had all cut out’. They ‘humped their blues serenely and made for Sydney town with a three-spot cheque between us, as wanted knocking down’. Three hundred pounds was a great deal of money back in those days but the danger signs were already there: the song says their cheque wanted knocking down, or spending in a hurry.
The shearers cross the Murrumbidgee, trek through Narrandera and past Wagga Wagga. Eventually they make camp at Lazy Harry’s ‘not five miles from Gundagai’. Unfortunately, Lazy Harry’s is a shanty: a rough type of pub specialising in ‘lambing down’ thirsty shearers with big cheques. The delights of this establishment are ‘beer to knock you sideways’ and ‘girls to make you sigh’.
Well we chucked our blooming swags off and we walked into the bar,
And we called for rum-an’-raspb’ry and a shilling each cigar . . .
The barmaid who served the ‘poison’ gives the shearers the wink and the spree is on. The money lasts a week—then ‘the cheque was all knocked down’.
So we shouldered our Matildas and we turned our back on town,
And the girls they stood a nobbler as we sadly said good-bye,
And we tramped from Lazy Harry’s not five miles from Gundagai.
The song ends with the hungover and broke shearers continuing their now difficult journey back to Sydney and whatever might await them there.
Being lambed down is a frequent theme of bush songs. One of these, usually known as ‘Across the western plains’, has a fair claim to be the greatest hangover song of all time.
Great Australian Journeys Page 17