eliza1

Ben Trevaskis Interview What made you decide to hitchhike around Australia?
Basically for an adventure, when I was a kid people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I would say an explorer. Even when I was kid on my BMX I would head off for the day to explore central Wagga. I’m just happy to be in new places and see new things and meet new friends.

Were you scared at all?
For the first twenty minutes of hitch hiking I sat out the front of my house in Lake Albert Road. I just sat there without a thumb out just with cold feet about the whole thing. Compared to a week into the trip it just became second nature to be on the side of the road with the thumb out. 

Did you have a plan of places you’d visit?
I had very loose plans the main goal was to follow the coast road around Australia and just see what ever came along. I didn’t have a travel book or a map just an open mind.

How many lifts did you get?
I think there was about 73 lifts they varied from Grandmas to P platers to families to young girls to truckies and travelers. 

What was your longest ride with a stranger?
From Darwin to Cairns about 3000km and three days worth of driving. It was with three Asians we couldn’t really communicate to each other very well. Their music choices were very interesting and loud. 

What was your favourite place and why?
My top five
Cape Le Grand National Park near Esperance WA 
Coral Bay WA
Darwin/Litchfield Park NT
Cairns
Bryon Bay 

Where did you sleep? It was a mix of friends and family to pitching my tent where ever I could to backpackers to staying at people houses that picked me up on the side of the road.

Was there anything that you didn’t take with you that you wish you had?
I didn’t take my SLR camera because I didn’t want to get in stolen while hitch hiking or at a backpackers. Looking back I think it would have been fine to take.

How long did the trip take?
The trip took three months; it could have taken one month or up to ten years. 

Did you meet anyone particularly interesting along the way? 
Every day I met somebody interesting, just because I think only interesting people pick up hitch hikers. The boring people in society just drive straight past. The most interesting person I met was Nick the fisherman from Alaska. His parents left him and his brother their house in New Orleans when he was eight.
He was in a street gang by ten, jumped on the back of a freight train at thirteen to escape the gang life and drugs. He worked on farms and hitched hike all across America and now works as a fisherman in Alaska.
He has been addict on every drug (heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana, speed. acid, smokes, alcohol) 
Uses his months out at sea for rehab. Has spent 61 days at sea at one time. Owns a house in Alaska, and a farm in Hawaii. Was hitch hiking when he was 16 and the driver got violent, he had to stab a guy eight times before he escaped the car. Been to over twenty countries in the world


 Did you spend a certain amount of time in each place or did it vary?
I would just do whatever I felt like, if I liked a place and made friends there I would stay there for a bit if the weather was bad or I didn’t click with any one I would just move on. 

Were you travelling alone the whole time?
I left Wagga all by myself but there would not have been two days of being alone. For example I was catching the train out of Sydney CBD to start hitching south. I sat down in the train carriage I looked across and there was a young German Backpacker drawing up a hitch hiking sign. I waited for him to finish then I introduced myself and we ended up hitching from Sydney to Perth together.

Did you have any troubles or unexpected glitches along the way?
No not really what I would call glitches, but I could imagine some people getting frustrated at some of the situations I got myself in. like standing on the same bit of road hitching for six hours or sleeping in a tent on a nature strip and people touching and yelling at you on the way home from the pub. 

What’s your favourite memory of the whole trip?
The best memory would have to be all the great people I met around the journey. As well as the national parks I found all the cities and bigger town are much the same, but the people and nature was never the same. 

If you could do the trip all over again is there anything you’d do differently?
I took three months of my uni summer holidays to complete the lap. If I did it again I would love to take a few years to complete another lap and work my way around and spend months in places I like.

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