Saturday 4 August 2012

Hitchhiking In Bulahdelah


So it was day two of our ‘epic’ road trip and we were still less than three hours outside of Sydney and stranded in a layby in the middle of nowhere. On the up side, we were able to finally call a mechanic and get an opinion on our broken bus; that opinion was – it’s fucked!! We needed to replace a fanbelt or something and it’s a really old car so they need to get the parts, long story short it was going to take four days and $200 each to get our baby back on the road.  So Ryan and Kelly the two most responsible people on our trip, set of with the mechanic to a nearby town.

With the bus gone and only two, one man tents for shelter we came to the conclusion that some of us would have to set off and find civilisation, whilst the others stayed put to guard our stuff and fend for themselves in the middle of nowhere layby. So off set all of the girls plus Harry; our map said that there was a town called Bulahdelah around 10 miles away so we decided to see if we could make the journey by foot.

After about 15 minutes we decided that this was an impossible task and stuck out our thumbs, a creepy man with a handlebar moustache pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride, we asked him how far the nearest town was and he said that it was an hour away (lie) and that he didn’t have room for all of us so he would just take the girls!! Needless to say, there was no way any of us were getting in that car! Then an entirely less disturbing French man pulled up in a campervan and said that he would take us to town, but he also didn’t have room so we left team Canada behind; as they didn’t really want to jump in the back of a strangers van.

We arrived in Bulahdelah 10 mins later completely intact and thankfully not raped, we started trying to entertain ourselves, a task that in this town is utterly impossible as there is literally just a chip shop, a bank and a hardware store so we hung around by some public toilets waiting for the Canadians to come and save us from boredom.

We waited for hours, then when they came we got some food and found out that the boys had come up with a complete cock n bull story about that turkey, in actual fact they had – got lost, been picked up by the man who owns the fish and chip shop, been given a turkey and wine by him as well as the rotisserie and been dropped back by his wife!! This man has got to be the loveliest man on the planet, because he then started ringing round for favours, trying to find us somewhere to stay. He was unsuccessful but lovely none the less.

I saw a sign in the hardware store saying “ farm work needed – hiring two people in exchange for food and accommodation” so we rang them and asked if instead of two people would they mind eight, and they shockingly said yes but we had to stay in the shed!

Peter and Caroline the farmers picked us up in town and dropped Harry back to the side of the road as he was sick of being a girl, they then took us to their farm, fed us some delicious food and then set us to work picking weeds, we then made our own bed in the shed, where we would be sleeping. It was not the best of living situations as it was freezing cold and I had to keep throwing lemons at Hanna to get her to shut up and stop snoring! Then they had an outside radio system to keep the foxes away. It started blasting out creepy music that sounded like what they played in Schindlers List when they were rounding up the kids, I became scared that they might come and round me up – thankfully I made it through the night and although very tired and cold I had not been sent to a gas chamber!!