I can't quite remember how many resumes I've handed out and emailed in the past couple of weeks. It must be something like 25 or 2 million. I was feeling pretty helpless (not to mention extremely poor) and was about to give up and go work on a farm when one day I receive an offer for an interview. One call-back was all I needed. I would be starting 4 days later.
Will the Botanist read my mind when he suggested that we should go for a short trip. With absolutely no planning and only the name of a remote campsite we googled the morning of, we packed our bags and kissed his cat and dog goodbye. We boarded the train at Southern Cross to Geelong, where we would start hitching. At one point, we had to stop because we saw a police car turn its sirens on (hitch hiking is illegal here) and tried to act casual on the side of the highway.
About 45 minutes later we were picked up by Brian who was on his way to Winchelsea where he lived. He worked for the marketing department for a local radio station. Having just camped at Lake Elizabeth a few days ago, he dropped us off at an intersection where he thought would have the most cars driving towards that direction. Unfortunately, it was already 6:30pm by this time and chances of someone passing by would be slim. Even worse, we were headed to a small remote township that probably wasn't of much interest to most people.
Just when we gave up and started walking towards a golf course that we decided that we would camp at for the night, a man spotted us from his pick-up and says "where you guys headed?". John was going to pick up a few truck tires and could drop us off 18km away from the campsite. Thinking that we could hike the rest of the way, we hopped in.
Halfway into our trip I realized I sitting on something really hard enclosed in a leather case. I moved my hands down its length and the moment I felt the trigger, I retracted my hand. I was in the back seat of a stranger's car that was filled with beer cans, sitting on his rifle. Better under my ass than in his hands.
John offered to drive us to Forrest in exchange for a bit of petrol money. We didn't even hesitate in accepting his offer. It was getting late and there wouldn't be any cars on the road.
From Forrest, there was 7km of uphill hiking to the campsite. My ass was sore, our path was becoming darker and there was no moon to light the way. We set our tent up in the dark.
The next morning after we had made breakfast, we hiked down to the lake for a swim. All of a sudden, from behind me I hear Will cuss loudly. I turned my head just in time to see a black snaked slithering off to the side. We had been too busy looking at the trees to mind the snakes sunbathing in the footpath.
Our water supply was running low and the closest place to get water would be in Forrest. We took a couple of trips to a stream, filled up our bottles and brought it back to our campsite and boiled the water.
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| Dinner! |
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| Eating spaghetti with a wooden spoon |
Lake Elizabeth is known for platypus appearances but we were both too sick and tired to hike to the river at sunset. Will went to get more water while I collected more wood to make a fire. "High-five for reversing gender roles," he said. I make a damn good fire.
On our hike back to Forrest the next morning, we got picked up by a couple that had camped beside us for just one night. The woman was from Vancouver Island! They took us all the way to the train station and we were able to relax the entire way back to Melbourne.
Time to start earning monneyyyyyyyyy
