With Every Step

by Cadigan, Neil;

  DAY 86, 22 MARCH 2011

  TANTANOONA TO CONMURRA (80 KM)

  Determined to make the magical 100-kilometre mark before being picked up by Cuddles’ mate, Cad was on the road at 2.30 am in the drizzle, his feet blistered and sore, probably from the new orthotic soles. Thousands of white snails filled the streets, swishing underneath his shoes. He stopped for a coffee ten kilometres into the day at a twenty-four-hour service station at Millicent, chatting to a couple of early risers while watching thousands of black crickets jumping around everywhere. ‘One lady who was dropping off the newspapers asked me a heap of questions like “Aren’t you scared some axe murderer is going to pull up”, ra ra ra. I thought, “Thanks, love, just what I want to hear before I go back to wandering around in the dark.”’

  For no stated reason in his diary, he’d decided to walk without headphones today and did a walk, jog, walk, jog pattern until 1.30 pm before collapsing on the roadside. ‘Every inch of me was ailing. I lay there for a couple of minutes and then made myself get up. I knew this exact moment was coming and I had said to myself out loud this morning that when the time comes when you’re absolutely fucked and think you can’t go on then you have a choice, a choice between giving up and being a dog or being a mad dog and having a go. I decided to be a mad dog and started hobbling up the road. I had done 70 kilometres and decided that I would only be remotely happy with at least 80 kilometres or it just wasn’t worth putting myself through all this pain. I had about three hours before my lift but it still wasn’t going to be easy. I put my headphones on and said out loud what was the point of no music, you idiot. I put ‘Free Bird’ on full bore, fired up and started to jog. I was yelling, “Let’s do this, fuck 80, it’s 90 or nothing!” I jogged until I was fucked, then went back to a power walk to catch my breath and then I’d start jogging again.’

  Cad was devastated when Cuddles’ mate pulled up at 3.45 pm (he’d expected him at 4.15 to 4.30 pm) as he was hell-bent on getting at least 80 kilometres on the clock, a personal best, after realising he wasn’t going to reach the magical 100 kilometres. He thought he’d fallen short when he dropped a pin on the Google Maps app on his phone – he’d been walking for thirteen hours – but he’d snuck in by half a kilometre. He dropped Redge at Judith and Brian’s before Cuddles’ mate Chris dropped him in Mount Gambier. There he found a hotel near the highway, ate big, burst the blisters on his feet and filled them with peroxide, then went to bed dreaming of a bender back on the Central Coast.

  DAYS 87–94, 23–30 MARCH 2011

  TO MELBOURNE AND THE CENTRAL COAST, THEN BACK TO CONMURRA

  This period involved a bus from Mount Gambier to Warrnambool and a train from there to Melbourne, where he spent $500 on a suit and $200 on shoes for the wedding and a lot more on a tattoo of a topless mermaid from his new favourite tattooist, Jaclyn. Flight home on the Friday (25 March), a trip to the Olympic Stadium that night with Matt Delaney and me to a Parramatta NRL match, and catching up with his cousins and uncle from Wodonga, Josh, Regan and Ken. Breakfast with family then the wedding next day, a long thirtieth birthday bash with friends on Sunday (thirteen days before his birthday). Much of Monday was spent sleeping and recovering, ready for a flight next day and back to the grindstone. He also spent time with Jaime, and talked about what the future might hold. He flew via Melbourne, where he had the topless mermaid tattooed on his leg.

  After picking up his rig from Judith and Brian’s, he was back on the road, trying to hitch a ride to where he had been picked up five days earlier. As it approached sunset, and despite holding out a $20 note then a $50 note as enticement for someone to take enough pity on him to pick him up, he gave up and camped just off the roadside.

  DAY 95, 31 MARCH 2011

  CONMURRA TO KINGSTON (29 KM)

  He nabbed a lift with three people and a Rottweiler in a beat-up old red ute, the driver advising him the giant dog didn’t like people! ‘I could tell the thing looked like it wanted to kill me as I put Redge in the back while Keith [a fellow passenger] held him. I sat in the back trying to keep my head out of the masses of spider webs that had accumulated in all the corners, while Keith stuck his two cents in about anything and everything while he drunk his cans of beer and smoked durries.’ The trip home for a mate’s wedding cost him eight days, and a lot of money; it was commitments like this that he paid for in November and December when enduring oppressive conditions in the country’s harsh north.

  He was back to the lonely grind, and it hit him hard. And he went through this mind challenge every time he went from enjoying company and having fun, wherever it was, to lonesome Oz On Foot life. ‘I got out and looked around, nothing in every direction. Not a single tree, house, car – nothing but dry grass paddocks and a handful of sheep – welcome back to the middle of nowhere! I sat around pretending to stretch, rang the boys, had something to eat, rang a few more of the boys, basically just trying to delay the inevitable as long as I could until I made myself get up and start walking. My feet were pissing me off so I stopped and took my orthotics out, then I stopped and put them back in, then out then in then out then in! I stopped every two minutes to scratch my itchy legs from my new tattoos, then I stopped to put sunscreen on, then again to put zinc on. Then my balls were driving me crazy because I’d shaved them and the regrowth was itchy. I stopped to moisturise them, then stopped to try tattoo cream, then I cracked the shits and stopped to take my Skins off. I was getting nowhere fast – I really didn’t want to be here. I thought about starting again in the morning but there was no choice as there was a barbed wire fence running down each side of the road as far as the eye could see in either direction. I made myself snap out of it and start walking.’

  The following diary entry that night is the real-life example of the conflict within Andrew that he took to the grave: the choice between the secure and rewarding life of a husband, father and worker that, however, would mean a life that would not satisfy the adventuring test-the-limits, aim-for-more personality that was deep within his character. He mulled over it for weeks and weeks, having spent some time with Jaime during those few days back on the Central Coast.

  ‘I needn’t have bothered listening to music, it was drowned out by the thoughts of my spinning head. Mainly Jaime – I knew this would happen. I must have planned out my entire future until death 100 times over until I came up with two scenarios. It basically came down to do I want to get married or not; if I did, I guess I probably couldn’t choose a better chick, keep in touch, maybe catch up every capital city. Go home, get married, have kids, buy a block of land, build a shed on it to make furniture out of until I make enough money to build a house on it and spend the rest of my days growing old accumulating shit that I can’t take to my grave with me. But I don’t think I want that anymore. Maybe I want to keep having fun, keep travelling, keep adventuring, climb Everest, live life to the full – after all, you only get one life. Do I want to spend the rest of it working my arse off? But then is it only a matter of time until I want the first option and then it’s too late – I’m an old man and I missed my chance. I just wish my brain would just shut up, this shit was on loudspeaker all day non-stop, nothing I could do would switch it off.’

  Four young blokes pulled up in an old station wagon and asked where Cad was going. When he replied, ‘Sydney,’ they told him he was going the wrong way. They were sheep shearers and he was invited to bunk with them at their quarters seven kilometres up the road. He accepted and arrived while they were in town for dinner. When they returned, he picked their brains, as was his way, and heard how they received seventy-five cents a sheep and could shear 600 to 800 a day. It’s a wonder he didn’t decide he wanted to be a sheep shearer!

  DAYS 96–97, 1–2 APRIL 2011

  KINGSTON TO TILLEY SWAMP (67 KM)

  Andrew treated the next 143 kilometres before the next town, Meningie, as a practice run for the Nullarbor. After washing clothes at a laundromat and doing a small shop at Kingston he was into it, loaded up with twenty-
four litres of water and a new aim: to spend no more than $10 a day, except for any equipment repairs. He walked until 6 pm and was about to find a place to camp when a couple pulled up and offered him shelter in their shearing shed on their 8000-acre sheep and cattle property, and to attend a barbeque at a neighbouring property. He wished he hadn’t. When he returned from dinner to his quarters the stench in the shed was overbearing, and the noise of a generator and hordes of mosquitos saw him get little peace. ‘I cracked it and set my tent up in my boxer shorts on the grass outside.’

  On his walk back to the highway next morning Andrew had to confront five bulls sitting by a gate, which he passed without taking his eyes off them, very dubiously for someone who had twice run with the bulls at Pamplona in Spain. ‘There were two medium-sized trees within running distance if they charged. I was going to be up the top of one of them quicker than you could say stuff this!’

  Soon after, Cad met a young Australian guy riding from Adelaide to Melbourne on his pushbike – the only person he came across all day. ‘He had that much shit on his bike and trailer it wasn’t funny. I asked him how many kilometres he was doing a day and he said the biggest was 70 and now it was 30 to 40 – I was disgusted! He said he walked every step of the Adelaide Hills and he normally rides for five to ten minutes and then gets off and walks for five to ten mins to give his arse a rest, and stops riding mid-afternoon because he thought people drove worse in the afternoon and it was too dangerous.’ Andrew told him of his first bike tour from the Central Coast to Cairns, over 2300 kilometres in thirty-eight days (an average of 62 kilometres a day) with no preparation. The man had taken nine days from Adelaide to get to this point, whereas Cad planned to be there in six days on foot. ‘I hope he felt like a big girl, adventure is about pushing yourself, having a go and going through a bit of pain. He was a good bloke and we chatted for a while but I left shaking my head.’

  DAYS 98–100, 3–5 APRIL 2011

  TILLEY SWAMP TO POLTALOCH (111 KM)

  About 10 kilometres out of Salt Creek, Cad was confronted by three hydrogen-fuelled Mercedes cars – and nineteen convoy vehicles – as part of the ‘F-Cell World Drive’, 32,000 kilometres in 125 days, from Germany back to Germany, to prove the technology was viable. They skipped between continents in 747 jets! Christian Maier, who was in charge of a production team documenting the whole trip (along with press journalists and photographers), invited Andrew to do a guest spot, filming him from different angles walking down the highway and doing an interview that can be seen on YouTube. It was crazy how, in the middle of nowhere, he came across the remarkable convoy and their worlds overlapped, and then, in the blink of an eye, they continued on their whirlwind four-continent jaunt while he was back to his slow, painful, solitary trek.

  He was to come across similar experiences (but not as spectacular as this) over the next months. The next day he met Colin, a sixty-twoyear-old who was on the last leg of his 17,000-kilometre round trip from Melbourne on a bicycle with a trailer.

  Andrew was well into the Coorong wetland wilderness and was taken by the scenery. ‘The Coorong has opened up to this massive lake 1–3 kilometres wide and as long as the eye can see, with large sand islands poking out everywhere covered in grass and shrub. There was a real small red grassy shrub that blankets the landscape, with green knee to waist high shrubs poking out through the red. It was pretty cool. The dunes that separated the Coorong from the ocean were huge and more like a mountain range, also stretching as far as the eye could see. They were covered in vegetation and only small patches of the yellow sand were left exposed.’

  As he camped that night with hundreds of curious mozzies, he received an email from someone who advised him he’d made it onto Wikipedia in the list of people currently walking across Australia and that he would be only the third person to have walked around Australia solo (he’d thought he’d be the second). He was able to get the email address from the web page of one of those previous solo trekkers, Colin Ricketts, who lived at Mount Barker, near Adelaide, and wrote to him in the hope he could arrange a meeting. Colin replied, and Cad became excited about seeing him and hearing of his experiences.

  Next day Cad decided to try his luck at seeking some sponsorship (I took over the role weeks later) and was able to snare a new sleeping bag and mattress, free, from Roman.

  DAYS 101–103, 6–8 APRIL 2011

  POLTALOCH TO ADELAIDE (183 KM)

  Cad received a call from Colin Ricketts, who’d raised $150,000 on his around Oz epic in 2005, and arranged to meet up the next night. ‘He’s a legend and does know what it’s like,’ he wrote. ‘He said he was pushing around 100 kilograms and kept snapping axles. I can’t wait to meet him.’

  I clearly remember the next day when I was trying to post a photo on Facebook for Andrew but, being a Facebook novice at the time, I was having trouble. I called him for some help and we ended up having a terrible argument. Cad recorded in his diary that he woke in a great mood but I was in a bad mood and that got his back up. Anyway, we ended up arguing and I hung up on him. He recorded: ‘My blood boiled so quickly it wasn’t funny. I stewed over it all day and texted him and told him I wouldn’t ask for another thing and to basically fuck off.’

  Reading these words in Andrew’s diary as I sat by his bed while we were in Chiang Mai, I felt terrible. This is what I wrote in my own diary at the time:

  ‘It reminds me of how busy I was at the time, trying to combine my job as operations manager of rugby league’s player agent scheme, media advisor to Parramatta Eels and being right on deadline to finish a book on State of Origin. I was working sixty-five to seventy hours every week and had realised I wasn’t spending enough time with Chris and just didn’t have the spare hours to be chasing PR for Andrew, despite feeling guilty that I wasn’t providing the support he needed. I didn’t realise none of his mates were helping him out. He was out there in the middle of nowhere doing it tough, and I turned my back on him because of my workload. Working my arse off just doesn’t seem important now, but family is. I was stressed and tired and short- tempered, wanting to finish the origin book and get some of my life back. I wanted to later join him for a few days, but he needed me right then. Only now do I realise how much it hurt him.’

  Cad made it to Mount Barker at 8.15 pm, and Colin, who’d arranged for him to stay at a caravan park, was there to meet him on the edge of town. ‘I jogged it while Colin was following me in his maroon sedan with the hazard lights going, it was a pretty funny sight,’ he wrote. ‘He showed me a cabin and I had a shower – which felt great, the first one since the sheep shearers’ shed [six days earlier] – while he went and grabbed a pizza, garlic bread, drink and gelato. What a legend.

  ‘We chatted about everything – not so much about equipment or anything like that, more about the media and raising money and general stuff. He is still writing a book but he decided to do his walk coffee- and alcohol-free; he’s gunna laugh if I ever write a book. He planned his trip for nearly two years and had MLC as his major sponsor and they gave him $15,000 for expenses. He had help from friends and family, and I told him I was spewing my friends and family were not more involved. He said you can’t expect anything from anyone, and people have to want to help you.

  ‘He didn’t camp out much; he stayed with a lot of people he met along the way. He took a book with him and got a lot of people to write down their details and a message in there. I said it was a good idea and I should do it. Next thing it was one o’clock. I thanked Colin again for the pizza and asked if he had paid for the cabin or if it was free, he said it was free.’

  The next day Andrew found that Colin had in fact paid for his cabin – ‘cheeky bastard!’

  DAYS 104–105, 9–10 APRIL 2011

  ADELAIDE

  Cad did an interview for the Adelaide Advertiser, caught up with Dutchman Dennis, who he’d met in Tasmania, and hit the town with plenty of other backpackers from his hostel for his thirtieth birthday celebration. He had a great pub-crawling night and p
osted his birthday video blog while blind drunk – not remembering he did it until he checked his phone the next morning!

  Next day Colin Ricketts called to meet up with him and passed over a book with ‘Oz On Foot’ and ‘Cannonball Cad’s Guest Book’ written on the cover. ‘What a nice guy,’ Cad recorded.

  DAYS 106–110, 11–15 APRIL 2011

  ADELAIDE TO SNOWTOWN (167 KM)

  This was an uneventful stretch. Cad was offered a bed at Largs North, seventeen kilometres out of Adelaide, by a worker at the bike shop who provided new tyres and did repairs for him. Further along, he encountered some rain and – for the first time but not the last – a mass of mice when he camped. He reached Snowtown, best known for the ‘bodies in the barrels’ murders in the 1990s, when eight bodies were found in barrels of acid in a disused bank, taken there from elsewhere, which led to four men being convicted of murder.

  DAYS 111–112, 16–17 APRIL 2011

  SNOWTOWN TO PORT PIRIE (82 KM)

  For those who became regular viewers of his video blogs, Day 111 is renowned for the instructive routine of how to lube one’s testicles and bum to avoid chafing – a classic bit of Cad humour.

  His blog the previous day revealed he’d walked 53 kilometres and struck some body bother: ‘It’s very surprising; I have been walking in agony all day – no, it’s not the blisters or the shins, it’s mango rash. And I’ve got it bad, AKA scrot rot, otherwise known as chafing, I’ve got it all up under my nuts, top of my legs, in my crack. I’ve been walking around with my hands in my cheeks trying to give my arse a bit of relief all day. I blame the Skins, they just lock all your gear in, you know, and friction does the rest. Anyway it’s nothing a bit of 3B won’t fix up and I’ll have another big day tomorrow.’