 |
| Hitch Contents |
|
 |
|
By Gavin Tyte
Print
Email
I hitched all the way from Katherine to Broome with an ex-policeman in a white VW combo van. The van had been christened ‘Bush Pig’ in large black letters on the side. The policeman had served in Northern Ireland and had left the force after his name had been found on an IRA hit list. He met up with some other British friends in Broome and I tagged along in search of fun.
Broome is a strange place. Isolated on the northwest corner of Australia it is a stopping ground for all travellers making their way around the west coast. It is also the base-camp for tourists wanting to explore the Kimberley’s – an area of outstanding natural beauty. On one occasion I had in my possession (can’t think why) a copy of the Beano comic. Rather than throwing it away, I decided to give it to a young boy who was sitting next to his mother on a park bench. The boy politely said, “no thank-you’” and the mother said, “ooh, yes please”, grabbed the comic from me and started reading.
Broome is notorious for sucking money and time from unsuspecting victims. I met with one chap who called his wife to tell her he was passing through Broome and that he, ‘might be some time’. The wife apparently accepted this excuse as perfectly normal. The locals call this phenomenon ‘Broome-Time’.
I was no exception. In one week I managed to spend $300 of my precious cash, be involved in a bar brawl and degrade myself publicly. Want to know more? Alright then…
Life in Broome seemed to slip into an all-to-easy pattern. I would pitch my tent on the beach, wake when the sun rose, laze around on the beach drinking Coca-Cola and eating ice-creams. By midday, when the sun was at it’s hottest, I would retire to the resort (opposite the beach) and soak myself in the resort pool drinking cans of VB (Victoria Bitter). When evening came, I and my companions would visit the Roebuck Inn, a notorious establishment where the furniture was either missing or nailed down to prevent its use in bar fights. Every night the pub would have drinking competitions and these were free to enter because usually they couldn’t find anyone fool enough to participate. The winnings were usually bottles of alcohol. After the pub had closed I would find my way back to the beach and ‘crash out’.
After several days of this life-style the crunch point came. During the afternoon I had been asked back to an Aussie girls house - she assured me that her husband was away. What kind of people was I hanging around with? I refused and decided to head down to the pub with my companions. That evening at the Roebuck Inn I participated in one particularly nasty drinking game. Two contestants had to drink a can of lager, eat a large burger with the lot (egg, bacon, pineapple, cheese, beetroot and salad) and then drink a whole jug of lager in the fastest time possible. Of course I came second. My adversary brought his burger up twice as fast as it went down thus being able to have room for the jug of beer. Anyway, I got some free beer and a free feed. After a couple less demanding games our team of Brits entered the last competition, a ‘boat race’ where we had to down cans of beer one at a time. Our team came first and we won a bottle of rum. The whole team by this time was feeling a little worse for wear. The pub closed and we stumbled out of the pub. As we did this, a group of Aboriginal women decided that they wanted our rum and started yelling at us. One of them threw a rock and clocked one of our chaps just above the eye. Blood started to pour out and the only option was to pile into ‘Bush Pig’ and drive to the hospital. Apparently I was voted the most sober person to drive so I took the wheel. The others all fell unconscious in the back of the van. Broome is a small town and I figured that if I drove around long enough I would eventually find the hospital. I’m not sure how long I drove for, but this was an emergency. I didn’t even stop when I expelled a burger-with-the-lot out of the van window. Finally, I saw the hospital and we pulled over. The gang piled out and collapsed on the lawn in front of the entrance. A nurse came and took our injured man inside. As she did this the police arrived. They asked who was the owner of the vehicle and we pointed to my policeman friend who was unconscious on the floor. We explained what had happened and for some reason they let me drive us all back to the beach once after had collected our man who now had stitches above his eye.
That evening I decided not to pitch my tent on the beach but pitched it on the green lawn of the park next to the beach. I fell into a deep slumber until about 5am when the sprinklers came on to water the lawn. A jet of water squirted right into my tent and hit me in the face. This was my wake-up call. I decided to leave Broome that very day.
There’s a saying in the Bible that “a dog returns to it’s own vomit”. I think this is the most disgusting saying but it accurately captures something of the degrading behaviour to which some of us stoop. Here was I, someone who had chosen to give his life to Jesus, getting into drunken fights and driving under the influence of alcohol. I had slipped back into old habits – and it had only taken a couple of weeks. Like a dog, I had returned to my own vomit. It wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last time this would happen. I had also spent several hundred dollars in the process. I felt like a fraud. Perhaps I was a lost cause? Would God give up on me? Only time would tell.
View Comments (0)
|
|
