Next thing they were into a fast jog, heading for a water tower that had been getting bigger all day and had become their nominated finish line. Cad recorded: ‘I copped a wicked cramp in my left calf and stopped to stretch, Josh kept jogging. I stretched quickly and kept on going. Josh had started legging it! I knew he was trying to leave me for dead. I thought, “Fuck that!” and started legging it after him as fast as I could. My chest was on fire. It took ages to catch him, then I casually jogged up beside him. I could see the look of amazement in his eyes. He said, “Good effort.” We hit the roadhouse in a sweaty mess. What a scene, there were crew everywhere then they see the two of us, no shirts on, coming out of nowhere.’
They had barely caught their breath when a male and a female cyclist rode in from the north. Cad was amazed to find it was Aitor, the Spanish rider he’d met on the Great Ocean Road six months earlier. After a warm embrace, Aitor informed Cad that he’d changed his earlier plan to fly from Melbourne to Auckland and cycle through New Zealand. He had instead ridden from Adelaide through the centre of Australia to Darwin and was now riding anti-clockwise to Perth, having linked up with a young Italian woman on the way. He’d now been on the road for two and a half years.
Cad and Josh found there were no more buses to Denham until the next day so they stood in front of the roadhouse begging motorists to fit them and Redge into their vehicles; for four hours they had no luck. They took the wheels off Redge to make it look more compact and stayed in the hitchhiking position until just after sunset, by which time they had a sign on paper which said ‘Denham please’, with a smiley face underneath. Cad claimed the artwork would create a change of luck and two hot female backpackers would soon pull over.
Within five minutes their prayers were answered; a campervan slowed down, Andrew screamed, ‘We’re on!’ and almost jumped in front of the headlights with his hands under his chin, begging for compassion, while he held the sign with his elbows. With that two German backpackers (male, unfortunately) stopped and the boys had a lift to their designated destination, Monkey Mia.
DAYS 246–249, 29 AUGUST–1 SEPTEMBER 2011
TIME OFF IN MONKEY MIA
Two days before they arrived at Monkey Mia, a woman who introduced herself as Maria pulled up and suggested they should detour there. When they told her that was already the plan she suggested they ask for her on arrival and she’d help them out. It turns out Maria was the manager and she upgraded them from the dormitory to a beachside room, had ice-cold beers and pizza waiting for them, and during the next four days they were treated by the staff like celebrities, which they overwhelmingly appreciated. It was one of the best periods of Cad’s walk, just being able to relax with Josh and the crew he met at the resort and having a lot of laughs together. They were taken out fishing, saw the dolphins close up, partied and just wound down for four days.
Josh headed back to Sydney the next day – back to ‘normal’ life on the Central Coast – while Cad returned to his abnormal life of solitude. It would have been hard for both of them, moving in their completely different directions. It wasn’t lost on either of them how different their lives were going to be for the next year, and they kept in regular contact.
While Cad felt comfortable to be the sole master of command again, it only took days to hit him how lonely life was to become, and how much Josh’s company, commitment and naturally genuine character had boosted his spirit.
‘Walking for those few weeks up the coast of WA was one of the best and most rewarding things I have ever done in my life,’ Josh later told me. ‘I wanted to get out there and give him some company on the road. I mean, how could I not? He was walking around the country in memory of my younger brother. Cad always had his mission in his head, but to decide at the wake to dedicate a solo walk around the country raising money for myelodysplasia was something so unbelievable and special to me and the family. I was so stoked to get the chance to see what it was like out there as I wanted to see what it was all about in his environment.
‘Walking some mornings was definitely tough especially the “5 kilometres devon”, which we named the first 5 kilometres of the morning when everything is aching, especially your feet, but after limping and powering through the first 5 kilometres you were right and broke the first pain barrier of the day. It was easy for me; sure, it bloody hurt and at times and I didn’t really feel like walking, but I had Cad by my side to get me keen and for only a short time I was there I kept him keen. Some days we would walk along talking for hours and realise we had just clicked out over 20 kilometres. Others days we would have the headphones in and just smash out kilometres, but every day we spent a good while talking about everything and anything, and the most random left-field things sometimes; we got to know each other very well.
‘For him to complete a solo walk around Australia is just an unbelievable and psycho super human effort, something none of us will ever truly understand. To get up day after day and just keep trudging along and getting it done and staying true to his word is mind-blowing, something he deserves so much credit for. Cad is a very special human.’
When I look back at Cad’s video blogs and see the laughter and contented look on his face on-camera during that period, it was obvious how much fun his walk had become. It is something I am so glad he and Josh shared, and it was clear to me, when he was reunited with Josh on the last day of the walk in Sydney, what a special bond they had. I’d like to think that has also created an ongoing bond between Josh and me. On top of getting on so well anyway, each of us knows we have a more intimate insight into Cad’s life on the road than anyone else, with Josh experiencing it with him for so long and me having read his diaries.
9
BROOME OR BUST
This was the stretch where the mental roller-coaster really hit Andrew. As far as I can ascertain, it was the period in which he went to a doctor who diagnosed him as suffering depression and prescribed antidepressant medication. This would surprise those he met, partied and relaxed with during these few weeks. But the insomnia set in again, and he went from highs to lows and back again – up when around people, and down when by himself. Obviously the isolation hit him hard after spending time with so many people over the previous couple of months. Plus he was tired, very tired.
After Josh headed back to the east coast of the continent, Cad was back to his daily routine and his own company. He recorded that he felt comfortable to return to what had become a compulsively orderly routine. But he lost companionship. I feel that after being surrounded by mates in Perth, then Josh and briefly also Billy, then being hosted so well in Monkey Mia, the loneliness hit him hard.
He decided his commitment was to get to Darwin for Christmas. Denham and Darwin were more than 3500 kilometres apart, and were also separated by the onset of summer. So he set himself the mission of hightailing it to Broome, where he’d decided to take time out to fly to his cousin’s wedding in Fiji. That was two months away, and on his return he’d have a month and a half to sweat it out and get to Darwin by Christmas – sweating certainly being the appropriate word for the spirit- and strength-sapping trek to the Top End to come.
Shortly after Cad had embarked on the walk from Sydney, his schedule was to be in Darwin in early November, from where he would fly to Fiji. Now he would be leaving from Broome for the wedding, and would have to endure probably the longest flying route in the country – Broome to Perth, then Perth to Sydney.
It was 2 September 2011 when he realised the partying with mates of old was over and he was back on his own. He’d already been walking for nine months, yet so vast is the west coast of Australia that he had over 1900 kilometres to go to reach Broome, the intriguing holiday destination on the continent’s north-west corner. Despite logging eighteen 50-plus-kilometre days, it took him two months to get there, primarily due to two-to-four-day rests at brilliant locations like Coral Bay and Exmouth on the Ningaloo coral reef, and several mining towns where he had mates taking advantage of the opportunities provided
by the resources boom of the time.
DAYS 250–258, 2–10 SEPTEMBER 2011
OVERLANDER ROADHOUSE TO CARNARVON (202 KM), THEN FOUR REST DAYS
After scoring a lift from Denham back to the Overlander roadhouse to recommence his journey, Cad had a phone conference with staff from the Leukaemia Foundation and was introduced to Nina Field, who was allocated as his case manager. They would develop a close relationship via the many phone calls from Nina checking on Andrew’s progress over the following months, and Andrew was delighted to meet her personally when he crossed the finish line in Sydney. He was taken aback by the interest and involvement from the foundation, and during that first conversation he requested that all monies raised go to myelodysplasia research.
As I read his diaries, it was obvious to me that his moods fluctuated wildly, but on this first day back into his singular existence he was momentarily on a high. He sat outside the Overlander roadhouse eating a Chiko Roll and sipping on a can of Coca-Cola; he looked to the seemingly endless road to the north and recorded a strange rush of exhilaration: ‘I had cold shivers shooting up my spine, it was weird and hard to explain, it wasn’t so much a thought in my head but a feeling – like “how good is this”, I’m out here having a ball, not working, spending my money – I really, really couldn’t give a stuff about money or a career or a house, although my mind changes like my undies. Right there, right then I couldn’t have been happier.’ I suspect it was as much that he’d realised how glorious those few weeks with Josh and others had been, and the instant rapport he had with the Leukaemia Foundation.
So buoyant was he that when a road train carrying livestock whizzed past, spraying cow poo over his shirtless body, and he was unable to clean himself because he had run out of wipes, he just shrugged his shoulders and carried on.
But the dilemmas continued. The next day, while trying to straighten an axle on Redge, three spokes on the wheel snapped or bent out of shape. The wheel locked up, so he dragged the pram off the road and set about doing a temporary repair job. It was almost 200 kilometres to the next town, Carnarvon, and he had no phone reception. Fortunately, a family pulled over about 200 metres away to adjust the load on their roof racks, so Andrew sprinted over and gave the father an Oz On Foot business card with my phone number on the back, asking him to call me and ask if I could get a replacement wheel sent to Carnarvon. Fortunately, Morris Stanley, the company that distributes Chariot parts in Australia, provided the parts free, as they did again later in the trip, as they became great supporters of Oz On Foot. In the meantime, the wheel wobbled along but kept locking up as a spoke kept slipping out of position.
Comic relief came the next day, relieving the boredom of his only conversations being with the herds of goats that heavily populated the area. It took the form of a sixty-seven-year-old who was travelling by himself in a motorhome, towing a motor scooter. He stopped to offer Cad a banana and have a chat, and the conversation quickly turned to how many women he’d had sex with on his journey – none older, he declared, than his ‘African Queen’, who was forty-two. ‘He reckons he has got fiancées everywhere … he ran off to get his camera and showed me pics of a Sudanese fiancée, who I think is in Cairns, and another twenty-something-year-old in Alice Springs and another in Darwin.’ The man explained how the motor scooter was a chick magnet and he didn’t believe in foreplay: he was straight to the action, because at his age he could have a heart attack in five minutes. ‘He was full of himself but hilarious to listen to,’ Cad concluded.
Andrew came across yet another outback cyclist, this time a sixtyfive-year-old British man who had been on the road for two and a half years. He was flying home from Perth to start life on the pension. Sex didn’t enter this conversation!
By now Cad had a howling tailwind, which gave him the reverse problem faced while on the Nullarbor, where he had to push the pram, head and body crouched, into the headwind. Now, when he had a downhill slope, he had to sometimes put the brake on to stop Redge running away.
Cad ended up staying four nights in Carnarvon with two women, Kris and Jackie, who had been referred to him by one of his new friends in Monkey Mia, and was back on the (borrowed) tools briefly when he offered to build them a compost bin and do some repairs in the kitchen. His final night was spent at a hostel. He had his wallet pickpocketed by a group of local teenagers while, after a few beers, he was in the heart of what he thought was an inspirational conversation about doing something with their lives. Fortunately a passing tourist had seen what happened and he had his wallet returned.
DAYS 259–266, 11–18 SEPTEMBER 2011
CARNARVON TO CORAL BAY (233 KM), THEN FOUR REST DAYS
After deciding to stay an extra day in Carnarvon to attend the local horse races, Cad kicked on and had way too much to drink that night, which saw him limp out of town with his head between his tail, embarrassed by his drunken behaviour at the end of the night at the hostel, where he’d made a racket. He truly was depressed – in fact, he was driven to tears – another example of the highs and lows he was experiencing.
On Day 258, as he was loping slowly out of town, a truck pulled over: it was Danny, a friend from the Central Coast who was working in town and whom Cad had not seen or heard from in years. He pulled himself together and took up the invitation to stay a night with Danny and his wife in Carnarvon, delaying his departure another day. He recorded that it was a blessing that Danny had come along: he would have spiralled further if he’d been restricted to another lonely day along the highway, musing over his bad behaviour.
This period of his walk was a metaphor for his life. He would seem to be on a high, the life of the party, the one everyone wanted to be around or even emulate, but privately would often feel down because he drove himself too hard, tried to cram too much in, tried to touch the sky, although he never seemed to stop reaching or searching. When he wore himself out and felt the pressure he’d party hard to escape.
Those who watched his Day 260 video blog, which ended with the Green Day song ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ playing as he is seen walking away from the camera over a wooden bridge, would not have known what it was truly in reference to. Now you do.
Andrew had decided not to wallow in grief, however. It took him four days to walk the 226 kilometres to just outside Coral Bay (days of 50, 60, 65 and 51 kilometres), walking until between 8 pm and 10 pm each night.
On the way in to Coral Bay, on the morning of 15 September 2011 (Day 263), came a chance brief meeting with some Belgian travellers, which typifies the surprise sight so many tourists were confronted with when, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, they came across this lone man and a pram. A further surprise for Rik Gruwez, from the beautiful town of Brugge, was that a photo he snapped as Cad walked away after that meeting of minutes would become the cover of this book (he’d emailed it to Cad, and I was able to find, through the Oz On Foot Facebook page post, its originator).
Let me use the travel notes of Rik and his wife, Corry, who came across Cad during their two months in Australia (that took in Perth to Broome and the Gibbs River Road in the Kimberleys), to describe what they encountered: ‘The day ended with quite a surprise when we saw at the horizon an unfamiliar shape. It did not hop like a kangaroo, did not run like an emu and did not sway like a drugged possum. In a fashion similar to “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” we kept guessing as we came closer (you can see a very long way ahead on these roads). It turned out to be a man pushing a pram with a solar panel mounted on top of it. Cad, as he is known, is walking around Australia – yes, ON FOOT – for charity, donating the proceeds to cancer research. We had a chat with him, donated some Aussie dollars and took a photo. Then we both went on our way. Although we were both heading for the same destination, we would be there in six minutes, whereas Cad would need two hours. Respect!’
At Coral Bay Cad struck a friendship with ‘Captain Sensible’ and ‘Barbie’ (the nickname of a man) while playing pool at the hostel where he stayed, and what followed were three
days of socialising in his usual inimitable way, snorkelling over the coral just metres from the beach on a reef that is in every way just as spectacular as the more renowned Great Barrier Reef, and caught up on rest.
DAYS 267–274, 19–26 SEPTEMBER 2011
CORAL BAY TO EXMOUTH (152.5 KM), INCLUDING FIVE REST DAYS
Andrew had two big days on the road after he left Coral Bay; it was as if he felt, having had a few days enjoying himself with too much alcohol and too many late nights, that he had to take it out on himself by pushing hard. He walked 49.5 kilometres then 64 kilometres to get to Learmonth Airport, the RAAF base about 40 kilometres shy of Exmouth, which was further north along the Ningaloo Reef but off the main route to Broome, the North West Coastal Highway.
His insomnia was back and he woke at 1 am and struggled to get any sleep after that, yet set the goal of completing a 60-kilometre day. He had lunch at the 22-kilometre mark but was so exhausted he rolled his mattress and had a day snooze in the shade. Twice people stopped and woke him up to ask if he was alright. ‘I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I made myself get up and it took forever to come to. I was smashing rehydration tabs in a drink and sipping on it. I smashed a full pot of Weet-Bix, then finally made myself get into it. I really had to do 60 kilometres today to make town tomorrow. I told myself I was going to be there so I had to.’
Despite his left knee paining badly again and blisters appearing on his feet, he walked until 1 am and kept pushing on towards a huge glow in the distance, which he assumed was the Learmonth RAAF base, and camped between the road and the high barbed-wire perimeter fence of the base.
With Every Step Page 14