Photo credit: Alexas_Photos Pixabay

Next month it will be 34 years since the mass murderer Ivan Milat’s first victims bodies were found in Belanglo State Forest near Berima in NSW. Milat picked up all his known victims hitching between 1989-1992. He put an end to the innocent, trusting days when many of us regularly hitch hiked.

Before then, hitch hiking was a common sight on Australian roads and internationally. It’s over 60 years since  Bobbie and Laurie , Marvin Gaye and the Rolling Stones sang about it. Recently I saw it several times around Mullumbimby in northern NSW when up there for a music festival. How strange it was to see it again.

While strange or scary rides are always there with you, I look back on my hitching days with mostly fond memories, despite getting off to a shaky start.

When I moved to Sydney from Bathurst in late 1969, I hitched back to see my parents several times over the next couple of years before I bought a 90cc Honda to get me there. On one of my first trips home I was picked up near Lawson in the Blue Mountains by a man of my parents age, driving a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.

As he drew over to the side of the road I couldn’t believe my luck. But my elation changed to panic when he immediately began berating me in a thick eastern European accent, triggered by an anti Vietnam war moratorium badge I wore on my army disposal store greatcoat. His new passenger with hair down to his shoulders, a pair of knee-high fireman’s leather boots also obtained from the army disposal store near Central Station and a Papua New Guinea woven string billum bag holding a few weekend clothes spelt human vermin.  This set him off into a barrage of aggressive abuse about how I knew nothing of communism and probably little else besides, that I epitomised everything that was wrong with the country. Trash like me were leeching off others. We needed to be taught a lesson, he said.

I suddenly became very worried and thought about how I could get out of the car. After some minutes, we came to a halt in a queue caused by roadworks ahead. I saw my opportunity to jump out while the car was surrounded by those in other cars who would have seen any effort he made to detain me.  The rest of the trip was uneventful, with the last ride dropping me right outside our house in Bathurst.  Coming back to Sydney, I got a ride all the way with a chatty middle-aged couple who bought me a sandwich at Katoomba.

Hitching in Europe

Moving to London in 1973 with my (then) wife Annie, we hitched south to Devon and back with great ease, inspiring an ambitious plan to hitch through France and Spain to get to Morocco. After a rough channel crossing on the hovercraft with dozens of vomiting Japanese, we got a lift at Dieppe in an empty orange truck returning to Seville in southern Spain. Near Bordeaux, our driver pulled into a dirt road leading to an unmarked diner where we ate simple, magical French country food. There was no menu. After serving us, the waitress re-entered the room having changed into a mini-skirt, a clinging top and platform shoes. She and our driver went off to get to know each other better in a small caravan in the yard while we waited in the cabin of the truck.

When he returned, his chatty demeanour changed completely. Now sullen, out came the photographs of his daughters in their first communion dresses. And then out came the rosary beads. Instead of taking us all the way to Seville as he’d promised, we were dropped at the St Jean de Luz border with Spain, our witness to his fornication presumably weighing heavily on his decison.

We made our way with lifts to Burgos, then onto Valladolid (pronounced ‘By-eye-doh-lees’). On its outskirts trying to get next to the fabled Salamanca, we waited half a day with much traffic passing but nothing stopping. Our optimism drained out of us until at last a small car pulled over. The driver, a handsome Spanish architect, welcomed us into the car in excellent English and we set off with him animatedly describing Salamanca, also his destination. About half an hour into our journey, we were pulled over by a police car with two very unfriendly cops. They got us all out of the car, searched our bags and interrogated him for ages.

After they waved us on, he told us about police intimidation of anyone remotely suspected as members of the militant group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) which at the time following the 1970 Burgos trial of 16 Basque separatists, had escalated its campaign against police and state officials, demanding an independent, socialist Basque state.

He was clearly shaken by the experience and cautioned us about hitching further. At Salamanca we gave up and took a train to Madrid.

A bad end at Bad Ems

Our second hitching trip to Europe later the same year took us through Germany. We’d been far more successful, rapidly traversing from Heidelberg to Heiligenhafen on the Baltic sea. But this journey gave us a ride we would never forget.

We were on a feeder road onto a highway heading toward Koblenz in the Rhineland, on our way to Köln to see the famous cathedral when a car with two men in the front seat puled over. We settled into the back seat of the Opel and quickly established that the two spoke almost no English, although considerably more than our non-existent Turkish. So the lingua franca needed to be German. We’d both done it for a few years in high school.

“Wir fahren nach Koblenz, bitte” I chirped. They nodded. They understood. We were on the road to Koblenz. After a few minutes, an off-ramp showed a town called Bad Ems. They turned down it.

We looked at each other with a tinge of anxiety.

“Entschuldigen Sie. Wir müssen nach Koblenz gehen. Wir müssen dort den Zug fangen” It was kind of true. We did want to go to Koblenz but we would probably just hitch hike again onward to Köln. Trains cost money.

They said nothing but “ja, ja” and kept driving. The driver glanced at us a few times in his mirror.

We soon arrived at Bad Ems. It was a small town with lots of trees on the river Ems. ‘Picturesque’ was unavoidable. There were plenty of people walking about. It was a public holiday. They stopped the car next to a park on the riverbank and got out. They seemed relaxed and gestured to us that this was a lovely place, didn’t we agree?

They both walked over to a nearby public toilet near a kiosk and came back with a can of Coke for us to share. In the toilets, they had put gallons of oil in their hair and doused themselves in cheap cologne.

They made small talk about the park, where we were from and were we enjoying the Coke? After about five minutes, we started up again about the need to get the train at Koblenz.

While they were away we discussed whether to ask them to open the boot so we could get our bags out so we could leave these two and get another lift back up to the highway. We decided against it.

Other than ignoring us when we gently remonstrated about needing to go to Koblenz, they’d done nothing weird or alarming. Perhaps they had always planned to come off the highway to Bed Ems for some lunch? Perhaps they thought we might like a little detour to see this very pretty town? It seemed quite possible. So getting alarmed might seem offensive to them.

But the hair oil and cologne were something else. Or maybe not. Perhaps Turks, like anyone else, liked to freshen up after a drive or before lunch or when in new company?

The stocky one then said to Annie “Können wir einen Kuss haben?” (can we have a kiss?). It was not as if we had been chatting amiably for hours, or with any edge of flirtatiousness. The request seemed straight out of a predatory playbook that said “we fancy kissing this woman. We have your bags in the boot. We’;ve been hearing you saying repeatedly that you need to get the train to Koblenz. Well, here’s the deal. It’s up to you.”

So Annie explained, as nicely as she could, smiling away, that we were married and so of course, kissing was not appropriate with a married woman. She showed them her wedding ring.

They asked again, but without any real insistance. Just out of hope, We started up the Koblenz train refrain again, growing more concerned.

So we got back in the car and began to drive in the direction of the signs back to the highway. But then they turned right when they should have gone left. This time, we half shouted at them in unison “Wir müssen nach Koblenz gehen! Bitte! Bitte!”

They said nothing.They looked straight ahead and the driver started speeding up. We soon entered a forested area. We clenched our cold hands together, tighter than I can ever remember. We were terrified.

I said to Annie, let’s not do anything that’s going to get us killed. I reached for some imagined stereotype about swarthy Turks who would likely have knives and no respect for young western women moving around the country in the way we were. She should have been home in the kitchen.

It seemed obvious that they were after sex. We discussed Annie allowing them to do so, and how she might do nothing to anger them or make them anxious about the consequences if this was what was about to happen. She began silently crying. I felt utterly useless.

After driving into the forest for the longest 15 minutes of our lives, we turned off the deserted, sealed forest road and onto an unsealed narrow track. Within a minute, we were in the grounds of a brick factory. They stopped the car alongside a couple of others and tooted the horn.

In the upper floor windows of a building with about three floors, men began to appear. There was no sign of any brick-making work going on, so we quickly assumed that the building was some kind of dormitory for the employees, who began to come down stairs. Most were well dressed, perhaps getting ready to go somewhere on the public holiday.

Soon there were about 15 of them ranging from teenagers to men in their 50s. They were all Turkish and talked among themselves, staring and smiling at us. Annie looked ghost-like. We held hands and tried to look friendly.

I stammered a few questions in German about which parts of Turkey were they from? I had no idea what to say to any of their answers, constantly thinking about how long it would be until our fates played out. Would we be killed or released? Would I be killed first, or both of us together afterwards? Would all of them rape Annie? Would any of the older men stop it happening? I kept thinking how incongruous it was that we would be violently killed on what was by now a brilliantly sunny, warm day by men who were relaxing on their day off.

Our stocky driver and an older man then beckoned to us to follow them into the building. We climbed the stairs to a dining area adjacent to where the men slept. So this was where it would happen.

They gestured for us to sit down. Black tea was poured into small glasses, in the Turkish style. Small plates of black olives, feta cheese and bread were put in front of us. I saw my hand trembling as I reached for an olive and spread some cheese on bread. My mouth was dry with fear, the food barely stimulating any saliva. I had to swallow hard to get it down.

They talked among themselves, occasionally urging us to eat up.

I decided to try and remind them of their families, hoping this might dull their appetite for what was to come. So I asked which of them had wives and children back in Turkey. Several of the older ones did. One produced a photo from his wallet. Then another, and then another did the same. This looked promising. So I asked if they would like me to take their photos and send the pictures to their families in Turkey. This was met with obvious enthusiasm.

We all then went back downstairs and got my Minolta SLR 101 out of my backpack in the car boot. I threaded a new roll of 36 shot film into the spool and wound it on. They all crowded about to watch this. The men then lined up one at a time. All, without exception, wanted their photo taken next to Annie, with some putting an arm gingerly around her shoulders. I asked one to write down each man’s name and address in Turkey to correspond to the order of the pictures I would take. (photo below)

When all this was over, we ceremoniously shook hands with them all, drank some water they brought from upstairs and I then plaintively reminded our driver than we had a train to catch in Koblenz.

He and an older man then gestured for us to get into the car. Everyone shook our hands again, warmly. We were driven all the way to Koblenz railway station, with Turkish music playing on cassette in the car.

These were the first Turks we’d ever met. We allowed some primordial racial fear to poison every second of our time with them. For their part, they had stopped to help strangers. They’d diverted to show us a beautiful historic town. They’d then taken us to their ‘home’, shared their simple food and tried to talk with two graceless people who just kept saying they wanted to leave.

We never posted their photographs, I’m ashamed to say.

#the Bad Ems story was first published in Oh no … not this story again. Work and travel tales. (free download here).