With Every Step

by Cadigan, Neil;

  The headwind picked up to 40 kilometres per hour and it was cold in the early hours of the day; ‘It was like I’m walking uphill all day.’ For weeks Cad had been trailed by hawks but they’d picked up in quantity now, often ten circling him as he walked, but on this day (473) he saw at least a hundred. ‘It was like a scene out of Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds.’

  He made the Richmond roadhouse next day at 6 pm, where the owner, Judy, ploughed on the hospitality, treating him like a long-lost son and providing a room, T-bone steak and dessert for dinner, and chicken sandwiches for the next day’s journey. ‘I’ll never forget ya,’ he told her as he walked off. ‘What a nice lady,’ he diarised.

  He felt he needed a physical booster so ordered some protein powder online but, having to be in Charters Towers before the weekend to pick it up (so he wouldn’t have to stay over the weekend), he abandoned his planned day off in Hughenden on the Saturday; this gave him six days to travel the 250 kilometres from town to town. That was going to put extra pressure on him, but it was typical – always rushing when he didn’t have to. On the flip side, after talking to Josh Simpson, he decided to head back to the Central Coast in late May for the Sink One For Simmo fundraising weekend, despite the fact that it would be a travel mission, depending on how far down Queensland’s east coast he had walked.

  The next day, battling into the howling headwind, he made it to Hughenden on nightfall and kept going until he reached a driver-reviver station that was being packed up. The volunteer, a lady called Mim, yelled a greeting: ‘You made good time.’

  ‘Yeah, early day, only 50 kilometres today,’ Cad replied.

  ‘Want a cuppa?’ came next, and it was music to his ears as he pulled in for a chat.

  ‘She was a legend, probably fifty,’ he wrote. ‘She was the local teacher who came here for nine weeks nine years ago. Nice lady.’ And she donated $50. The Hughenden generosity continued when Robyn and Steve, the caravan park owners, gave him a free site, and ‘Blue’, who was staying in the hotel, shouted him dinner and breakfast.

  DAYS 477–481, 16–20 APRIL 2012

  HUGHENDEN TO CHARTERS TOWERS (249 KM)

  In his diary that day Andrew spent some space pondering religion and explained his attitude to it, after being confronted by one of the many devout Christians he came across on the trip, some of whom he resented for trying to force their beliefs down his throat. In particular, he despised the sight of handmade signs nailed to trees, depicting ‘God is Coming’ or such messages, which he felt was defacing the natural landscape out in the bush. Often, despite being highly fatigued, he would find the energy to climb up and remove the signs.

  Andrew said he was an atheist, despite having attended Catholic schools for seven years, but he had no issue with those who believed in God and was comfortable that they had such faith in their beliefs, although he did not share or understand them. But he resented the ‘God-botherers’ who tried to inflict their beliefs on him in an overbearing manner, and he’d come across quite a few.

  One day he was twice confronted by overzealous Christians and figured out what he felt was a glorious technique to avoid their rantings. He would simply state that he was a devout Christian who had attended Christian schools; he’d agree with their views, claim he had a Bible with him … and they would let him be.

  On Day 479, Cad had not had a day off since Tennant Creek, twenty-three days and almost 1400 kilometres earlier. He came to a lookout and realised he’d climbed 200 metres in altitude in a week since Mount Isa. He was finally on a downhill run to the town of Pentland with no wind to contend with – relief! He made a rest area at 8.30 pm in darkness with no moon to light the sky, and – as so often happened – he was greeted by a traveller who seemed to be expecting him. ‘You’ve done well!’ a voice bellowed.

  They talked for a while but the man couldn’t contemplate how Andrew didn’t want a beer after a long day on his feet. Andrew by now could predict the life story of some of the loners before he was told; he figured the bloke was a miner (yes, from Townsville), and divorced and living alone, and a ‘pisspot’. By the end of their chat, all these suspicions were confirmed.

  The next evening he came across another ‘interesting’ character who operated a roadhouse. Cad asked if he could fill up three bottles with water from the tank. He was told it was not safe as it was bore water and any water taken from the premises should be boiled before being drunk (‘ra ra ra’) so they would not get sick and come back and make a claim against him. Andrew filled his bottles up nevertheless (and described the bloke as a ‘rude prick’).

  As Andrew went to leave, the man yelled at him, ‘I can give you the cure for cancer and you wouldn’t have to waste your time walking around Oz.’ Cad rolled his eyes and replied, ‘Yeah? And what’s that?’ ‘Got a pen and paper?’ the man inquired. The bloke, sitting and leaning on a handrail the whole time, told him the story of how he went to hospital after a cardiac arrest, but when the doctors found he had cancer in both kidneys (and one had burst) and also prostate cancer, he was told there was nothing that could be done to save him. Days later he discovered a magic potion, and miraculously two weeks later the cancer was 90 per cent gone; it had completely disappeared in six months.

  Andrew was certainly suspicious of large holes in his tale, the more detail he gave. The miracle formula consisted of 250 millilitres of pure Canadian maple syrup mix with seventeen measuring teaspoons of aluminium-free bicarb soda, boiled together for four minutes. Take three teaspoons a day for three days, then one teaspoon a day forever after. The man, who Andrew learned was named John, revealed that people call him up from all over the world for his miracle recipe and that the reason Canadians have a low cancer rate is because they have maple syrup on their pancakes every morning.

  I read about this miracle mixture and found plenty of literature that endorsed it as being very effective. I wonder if Andrew, usually very inquisitive about such matters, also checked it out on the net.

  After Cad stopped for the night 33 kilometres out of Charters Towers, he checked his food supply the next morning and found only enough oats for a small bowl, an apple and Brazil nuts, all of which he had for breakfast, and a can of sweet corn, two tins of tuna and some Milo, the latter of which he decided was the best treat so he polished off half a tub, spoon by spoon, dry.

  He had met up (for a second time) with Alex Matthews a few days before, who arranged to give him a bed for the night and take him to the Enterprise Hotel in Charters Towers to do some fundraising. Cad found that the publican, ‘Moorey’, was ‘a legend’ who put $200 into the bucket collection to start the fund before one of the barmaids took it around and rustled up enough attention and support with the loudest female whistle Cad had ever heard. By the end of the night, thanks also to a raffle, there was another $800 for the Leukaemia Foundation … and Cad hadn’t had a beer.

  DAYS 482–489, 21–28 APRIL

  CHARTERS TOWERS TO TOWNSVILLE (130.5 KM) – DOWNTIME IN TOWNSVILLE AND CAIRNS

  After farewelling the Matthews family it was time for Cad’s compulsory visit to the bakery for a meat pie, then off to Salvos to buy a ‘flanno’. The old lady behind the counter, after chatting to him, hugged him and said he was the nicest young person she had met in a long while. ‘You have all the jewellery [earrings, lip and chin piercings] but I suppose I just have to accept it in this day and age,’ she told him. She asked him to treat himself to something else from the store and he grabbed another ‘flanno’ and board shorts. On his way across the road he was bailed up by another endearing old dear, who gave him a long hug and $50.

  His mood changed later in the day when he couldn’t get away from a strange character who rambled on, warning him about political unrest that was in the Book of Revelations and how he’d met a High Court judge the day before at a petrol station who told him that President Obama was starting to build a military presence in Australia and around the world, and it was soon going to turn into a one-nation world run by the Americans who w
ere going to unite with the Catholic Church and start implementing Catholic ways, and the church would run the Australian government: ‘*&###% fruitcake!’

  That evening he devoured two steaks that were given to him, spoke to Choli in Thailand, and heard from good mate Dobbsy, who was celebrating the birth of his first child (a girl), whom his wife, Lucy, had delivered that day. He slept well, a rare stint of eleven hours, only to be woken by a guy who emptied the garbage bins at the rest area. Hours later Cad’s tolerance of opportunistic religious fanatics was given a new test. A woman pulled up and left her car, walked towards him, asked if he was the guy walking for cancer and explained that her brother, who maintained the rest areas (and had woken Andrew up), had told her about him. She announced she was a Jehovah’s Witness and unleashed a sermon about her religion and what it could do for him, abating only to Andrew’s carefully constructed verbal repellent about being a devout Catholic-school raised Christian. ‘So you don’t want any material?’ ‘No, thanks.’ Worked again! Still, Cad was mightily pissed off that ‘some bin-emptying hillbilly’ could call his sister to prey on him while he was alone on the back ways of Queensland.

  Soon after, Cad arrived in Townsville; he’d walked to the top of the country to Darwin and now the width of the country and was back on the east coast. In four weeks he’d had only half a day’s break (other than walking 9.5 kilometres into Mount Isa on Good Friday) at an average of almost 56.5 kilometres a day. It was an astonishing effort, considering the headwind he had to contend with and the heat for most of that month. It matched the daily distances the Ride2Rescue crew were achieving on their bicycles.

  However, the pace he’d set from the Stuart Highway to the Pacific Highway, as incredible as it was, was about to be surpassed as he had one thing dominating his thoughts: ‘Get this mission finished!’

  14

  THE SPRINT HOME

  Andrew’s five days in Townsville and Cairns were to be his last bender of the trip, and he didn’t miss an opportunity to enjoy himself with the period coinciding with Anzac Day 2012. He had to buy going-out clothes, get a haircut and pay a visit to a doctor because of an infection in an ear piercing that he was told needed cosmetic surgery – so all in all it was an expensive diversion.

  After two nights in Townsville he’d caught a bus to Cairns for two nights before returning to Townsville for the regular maintenance and shopping activities. No one could begrudge him an extended break after having just four days off in fifty-five, and none for the last thirty days, meaning he’d averaged 49 kilometres a day for nearly two months.

  But his penchant for partying hard matched his on-road work ethic, and he only had twenty-four days to get to Brisbane – 1400 kilometres away – on the day he’d nominated to fly home to attend the Sink One For Simmo festivities in honour of Chris Simpson (and to dispose of the belongings of his that were stored at our place, which we were about to move out of). It also meant he didn’t have time to detour to Airlie Beach further down the Queensland coast, a break he’d earlier planned. Fortunately his mates at home had taken up a collection to fund his airfares so he could be there to honour Simmo; he was in the middle of the Nullarbor the previous year when the first anniversary fundraising event took place.

  After leaving Townsville there were very few days when he didn’t walk until well after dark. He had one day off (in Gladstone) before reaching Brisbane, and twice had his arm twisted to have one beer but otherwise did not have one alcoholic drink, even during his days back on the Central Coast. His preferred liquid consumption had become coffee in excess to give him energy, and water. It saw him somehow get to trudge almost 1400 kilometres to reach Brisbane on the twenty-fourth day – averaging 56 kilometres a day!

  DAYS 490–494, 29 APRIL–3 MAY 2011

  TOWNSVILLE TO PROSERPINE (272 KM)

  After leaving Townsville Andrew was in familiar territory for the first time after almost 12,700 kilometres travelled, as he’d cycled the Sydney–Cairns section of the national highway four years earlier. Memories of many of the places came flooding back to him.

  His new pet hate became the constant roadworks he had to navigate in many sections, his attitude to not missing one metre of the journey from Sydney to Sydney often putting him in conflict with lollypop-stick holders and even the on-site managers, as their concern for his safety was paramount. Many offered to put Cad and Redge on a ute and transport him through the hazard areas but he would not have a bar of that.

  A bigger hazard, he found, were trucks travelling too fast. A few hours out of Townsville he came very close to being hit by one and killed. It was about an hour after dark and he had his head torch on, putting his hand up to his face to avoid being blinded when cars came at him with high beam on; I assume he had also crossed the highway to walk with the traffic rather than against it. With his hand shielding his eyes from the oncoming headlights he had ventured slightly off the shoulder into the car lane when a road train pulled out to overtake the car on the other side of the road. Cad had music blaring through his headphones and could not hear the road train’s motor. Suddenly, as Cad recorded, ‘I just sensed the extra light as he pulled out, took my hand away and truck was right there at over 100 kph. I had to push on the handlebars and get on two wheels, just turned the thing into the grass and he just missed me – I should have dived out of the way. It just brushed me, it was so close. That was in the top ten closest calls on the trip.’ I’m glad he didn’t document the nine others!

  He had never seen so much truck traffic on the walk and I could hear the constant loud whirring of the passing vehicles on his voice memos (he did not continue his written diary past Townsville, but recorded daily events into his phone). One truck roared past, causing the beloved but badly worn hat he’d owned since Port Headland in Western Australia (day 300) to missile into a ‘filthy little swamp’. He was hit with the dilemma of whether to part with the now putrid, dilapidated hat or keep it for sentimental reasons. He explained next day in witty Cad style: ‘I wasn’t going to let it drown, but it’s like watching your baby drown in a swimming pool and turning around to your wife and saying, “It’s alright, we’ll have another one next year.” I had to get him out.’

  After four successive 60-plus-kilometre days, he made Proserpine on the fifth. By this stage had quickly begun to rely on taurine tablets (a natural stimulant), Guarana (a Brazilian plant extract used in energy drinks) and coffee to rev him up for the constant big days.

  DAYS 495–502, 4–11 MAY 2012

  PROSERPINE TO ROCKHAMPTON (471 KM)

  He was woken in Pioneer Park, Proserpine (where he’d also camped on his bike tour) by a groundsman on his leaf blower but had had his first solid eight-hour sleep in a long time. That day he walked until 11.30 pm and those long shifts became common. A minimum 60 kilometres a day became his mission, something he would achieve twenty-four times in the thirty-six walking days from Townsville to the Central Coast.

  He woke next day not far off the highway but just over a sugar train track, on the front yard of a cane property, trains and trucks breaking his sleep. Kane Foley called and said the boys had raised $250 for his airfares to come home and a few other mates also called, lifting his spirits enormously. ‘A few of the boys rang and made my day. I had some funny conversations.’

  The next day he heard from his cousin Matt Ruff who ribbed him, asking, ‘Are you finished with the “waahs” yet?’

  ‘What are the “waahs”?’ Cad replied.

  ‘The noise cry babies make,’ Matt advised, pointing to Andrew’s perceived whining on his video blogs. Josh Simpson called later the same day and made a similar observation.

  That evening Cad made the announcement that there would be no more whingeing on his blogs.

  He did an interview with the local paper in Mackay and was almost stumped by the most unusual question of the many interviews he did en route: did he think he would have trouble socialising again and forging relationships? He replied, ‘No, I haven’t become a hermit yet; I�
��m looking forward to it.’ It wasn’t included in the article.

  Later that day came another one-off for the trip – he was shot by a paintball gun! ‘Some dickhead shot me with blue paint and I had a big welt on my finger. I didn’t see where it came from – not sure if it was someone in a car or someone hiding.’

  On Day 497 Cad passed through Sarina. He’d already seen monuments such as the big mango (in Bowen), the big crab (in Cardwell), the big lobster (in Kingston) and the big prawn (in Learmonth), but he couldn’t understand why Sarina displayed the big cane toad. ‘I couldn’t believe how they could make a monument of a national pest.’

  Next day Sean Conway, a Zimbabwean living in London, pulled over on his pushbike for a chat. He explained he was part of the World Cycle Racing Grand Tour, which was a race covering 18,000 miles (the designated cycling distance – geographically, it was over 24,000 miles from point to point) from London back to London through America, Australia, Asia and Europe to claim the Guinness World Record for cycling around the world. Sean had been hit by a truck in Arkansas in the United States, and been forced to spend three weeks recovering (much of it in hospital), but was still completing the course for his own benefit, even though he had no chance of winning. (The winner was Englishman Mike Hall, who completed the race in ninety-two days.) Two days later Cad received an email from Sean, saying his mum had just donated $100. It was yet another gesture that blew him away: he was in awe of Sean riding around the world, yet his mother was so impressed with what Andrew was doing that she donated that large amount.

  A couple of days later Cad came across other cyclists with a cause, the Tour de Cure ride, which is best known through the involvement of Mark Beretta, the Channel Seven Sunrise sports presenter (and a mate of mine), who has been a participant for the past two years. Around sixty riders travelled from Brisbane to Mission Beach south of Cairns, fundraising for cancer research. The Channel Seven crew, when they became aware of Andrew’s mission, sent a camera back to capture Cad (Beretts sent me a tape much later), and after he’d completed the shoot one of the crew was impressed enough to suggest Andrew do some motivational speaking – which was ironic, because Cad recorded: ‘I should have hyped it right up and said how I fought ferocious storms, wild bulls, locust plagues etc.’