Arabic version: متنقّل بالاستيقاف يجد روابط إنسانية في رحلة من سيدني إلى بيرث

According to The Guardian, Aston Brown hitchhiked from Sydney to Perth, relying mostly on lifts from strangers and describing the journey as a way to surrender control and find comfort in other people’s company. Brown wrote that hitchhiking costs nothing, but can involve long waits, dehydration concerns and uncertainty on remote roads.

Brown’s trip included a wait of more than three hours outside Esperance, Western Australia, before Doug Hilton stopped in a four-wheel-drive. Hilton, the head of Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, was driving 500km west to Albany. Brown said the ride was the final stage of a journey that had begun five days earlier outside Broken Hill in New South Wales.

Hitchhiking, once popular in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s, is now uncommon and has been shaped by safety fears and differing road laws between states and territories. The practice’s reputation was heavily affected by the crimes of Ivan Milat, who was convicted of murdering seven backpackers in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. Dr Fang Liu of the University of Western Australia said social media can help normalise hitchhiking but may not show travellers the risks of poor phone reception, long waits and dehydration.

On the road, Brown travelled with Miranda and her children from Broken Hill, and later with Mike, 67, and Neil, 79. Neil drove Brown across the Nullarbor, a vast arid plain stretching 1,200km across southern Australia, before dropping him at a campground in Esperance after three days and 1,900km together. Brown said he chose places with visibility and room for vehicles to stop, and assessed drivers before accepting rides.