In my early twenties, I hitchhiked around New Zealand. I used this method to get from city to city as it was the cheapest way of getting around. The late eighties and early nineties were an interesting time in the country. A relatively slow, traditional country started to open up to more sophisticated, mature attitudes and behaviours. But, the same old values and beliefs were pretty ingrained. Some of them great, some of them appalling, especially by today’s standards.

When you hitch hike, you jump in a car with an absolute stranger who is either good enough to help you out, or opportunistic enough to see a young man hitching solo and stop to see whether they could take advantage of that opportunity.

I have experienced both. Some were great times and some were terrifying.

I had one memorable trip from Auckland to Wellington for a mate’s 21st birthday party. During the trip, I got stuck on an onramp on the southern motorway. I waited for around 40 minutes. There wasn’t much traffic. When an orange Mitsubishi Celeste coupe stopped, I jumped in with the middle-aged guy. It was just the two of us in the car, and he asked me where I was headed. Alarm bells started to ring. I asked him where he was going. He replied, ‘I’m just driving around heading nowhere in particular.’

When you are hitching, you always try to work out a travel plan in your head. You want to make sure you get out where there is a strong chance to get your next lift. It’s better than being dropped in the middle of nowhere, which had happened a few times. So for this guy to say he wasn’t heading to a destination was weird. He went quiet, and then asked me out of the blue whether I had a girlfriend. I told him I didn’t. In hindsight, that was the wrong thing to do. After he had changed gear, he put his hand on my knee and started to move it up my thigh. This was the first time a guy had hit on me like this and I was shocked. I grabbed his hand and said ‘Whoaaaa! You are barking up the wrong tree there pal, I’m not gay.’ To which he said, ‘Are you sure? You are giving me gay vibes and I think you’d like it.’ At that point I said, ‘No mate, I’m not. You need to stop the car and let me out. That is where this is going.’ He did exactly that. He stopped on State Highway 1 in the middle of nowhere. When I got out, he still wouldn’t let it go. He said ‘Are you sure? We could go somewhere quiet and maybe have some wine?’ At that point the temptation to tell him to eff off was strong. However, I was conscious of being alone on the side of the road. It had no footpath, and I was at risk if this guy took offence and got aggressive. So I just said; ‘Very sure mate. Thank you for the lift. All the best for the rest of the day.’

On another memorable trip, I was picked up by a Mum and her livewire 9 year old daughter. I sat in the backseat with the daughter. Mum was driving. The girl asked me if I wanted to play cards. Thinking a game of snap or last card was on the menu I said ‘Sure, lets play.’ But it wasn’t either game, she wanted to play poker. That little girl took $20 off me which was all the cash I had! She was delighted and kept banging my pack which we were using as a card table. She banged it particularly hard one time and set off my beard trimmer which instantly started buzzing quite loudly. I recall very distinctly. The Mum looked at me in the rear view mirror. She had a raised eyebrow and a quizzical smile on her lips. I realized she thought it was a vibrator. I quickly told her it was my beard trimmer. She just said ‘Sure. Whatever.’ It wasn’t until I reached into my pack and pulled it out, that she actually believed me!

When you’ve done hitching, you are more inclined to pick up hitch hikers yourself. I have had some interesting experiences picking people up. I picked up a guy from Wellington one day when I was heading back to Auckland from Wellington. It was early one morning. At the head of the motorway on Vivian Street, I stopped. I picked up an English guy in his late twenties. Strapped to his pack he had a large water gun. Before he got in I asked him where he was going. He said ‘Auckland.’ I said ‘This is your lucky day mate, get in.’ That trip was the fastest, most fun filled trip to Auckland I ever had. Every time we passed a car, he would hang out the window and shoot them with the water gun. We devised a points system, where if he hit the windscreen it was 50 points and a side window less. Crazy, as we passed a lot of cars and did an 8 hour trip in around 7 hours.

A memorable pair of hitch hikers I picked up were two women. I picked them up just out of Hamilton, heading to Auckland early one morning. One jumped in the front seat and one in the back, and I asked them why they were in Hamilton. They told me they were hookers from Howick who had had come down to work in Hamilton for the night. What followed was a fascinating discussion about the life of a hooker. They shared how they got into it and what sort of men were their clients. We discussed how much they made and where they worked out of. I learned details about STDs and violence. These were gritty realities I didn’t really want to know. At the end of the trip, they took $20 from the tray between the seats. Today, I still think it was the best $20 I have spent. It was worth it for the sheer uniqueness of the information. It also challenged my understanding of life on the ‘other side’ for some people.

The most infamous hitch hikers I picked up were 4 American girls who were all blond and pretty. We got on pretty well, so I invited them back to the flat in Hamilton to stay. I was pretty interested in my now wife Sharon at that stage. She did have a boyfriend. So, it was a non starter for me to even think about trying it on. But word spread rapidly. Every guy I knew in Hamilton turned up, and a party broke out. Brilliant for my street cred to have pulled not one, not two, not even three but four pretty blondes. I received a post card from them later. That was nice. There was a little bit of ‘what might of been’ in there from the young lady who sent the card. Nevertheless, it’s probably a great decision on my behalf as I’ve now been married 31 years!

Back to hitching myself, and one of the more terrifying episodes of my life. During another trip to Wellington, I made good progress to get to Taupo. It is in the middle of the North Island. I got there quite quickly. I was delighted when a white Austin Allegro or Morris 1300 stopped and another hitchhiker and the driver got out. I pride myself on using and trusting my gut instinct. To prove that I should never, ever ignore my gut, there were a few signals going off in my head. I put these to rest, thinking about how quickly this ride could get me to Palmerston North which is within an hour and a half of Wellington, which was my end destination. The driver insisted that I put my pack in the boot. In hindsight, this was one of the signals I should have considered. Usually, you would just keep it in the car so that you could grab it easily when you got out.

Crossing the Desert road was challenging. It is probably the most desolate length of road in the North Island. There are very few townships along its route. If you got dropped off, you might have to stay the night. My logical brain convinced me to get in.

The trip started well enough as we headed out of Taupo, but the conversation took a sinister turn when the township fell away in the rear view mirror. The large, unkempt white guy in his 50’s started to tell me that he had left Palmerston North as people were looking for him. I asked him why people were looking for him. He explained that he was bipolar. He also stated that the Police wanted to speak with him. This was alarming. Thinking on my feet, I asked him whether he had been taking his medication for his bipolar disorder. He said ‘No. I don’t like taking it. I like the stuff I do when I’m crazy.’ When he said this, he looked sideways at me. He wanted to see my reaction. He smiled when he saw that I was shocked.

Encouraged, he went on to tell me that the reason the Police were looking for him was that he had been accused of molesting old ladies in rest homes. Yes really. The problem in his mind wasn’t that he hadn’t done it, as he proceeded to tell me in graphic detail exactly how and what he would do to sexually abuse ladies in his care. The problem in his mind, was that he had been caught and had to leave.

When I told him to stop talking about these things, or tried to change the subject, he interpreted that as a sign. He thought that what he was telling me was having an effect. He believed that as a captive in his car on a desolate road, he could do whatever he wanted. Instead of stopping, he turned up the volume.

The conversation took a turn for the worse, if that was even possible. He said that his daughter wouldn’t let him see his granddaughter. Once again, it wasn’t that his daughter had reason to be concerned. Instead, she had taken action about it, which he thought was grossly unfair.

The most terrifying part was yet to come. Having done his best to disgust me, he decided to turn things up a notch. On a particularly desolate piece of road, where I don’t remember much traffic in either direction, he went quiet. The silence was somehow more menacing than the filth coming out of his mouth. The Desert Road is typified by small, sandy side roads. Army tanks and vehicles created them to access firing ranges from the nearby military base at Waiouru.

As we approached these side roads, no other cars were around. He was silent. He would slow down from around 60 miles an hour to around 20. When he did this, he would glance at me to see my reaction. By this stage, I was getting pretty freaked out. It must have been obvious. He would wait until we were just about past the turning before shaking his head and speeding up. He repeated this a few times, and I was thinking that he was either just trying to scare me or he was looking for the perfect spot to kill me, because a body may never be found out there.

As we approached a turning, again with no other cars around, he slowed down. He instantly started to fossick around in the under dash tray. The tray ran across the width of the passenger and drivers compartment. When he did this, we slowed right down to walking pace. He seemed to find what he was looking for. He kept his hand below the dash clearly gripping something. I couldn’t see what it was because it was hidden by the steering column. At that moment, I truly believed in my life’s purpose. I felt that I had guardian angels looking after me. I was literally in a car with a madman who was thinking about killing me.

Whatever happened to stop him going through with his plan or whatever he was thinking in that moment, he made a decision and sped up again and he didn’t slow for any more turn offs. We arrived at Waiouru and he demanded that I bought him a cup of tea. This was another blessing. It meant I could tell him my wallet was in my pack and that I needed to get it out to retrieve my pocket knife. He was very eager for me to retrieve my wallet to pay for the cup of tea, but he insisted that I put my pack back in the car and stood over me in a menacing way. I refused. I told him that I would buy him a cup of tea. but I would stop the night in Waiouru at a motel. He went absolutely nuts and threatened me with finding me and running me down, amongst a range of other things. I was aware that I was out on my own. I also knew that I had a long way to go on the second stretch of the Desert road so I agreed to his demands. I insisted that my pack was on my knees. Getting back in the car was probably not my best decision. Fear can cause you to make strange choices sometimes.

For the rest of the trip, he went back to trying to disgust me telling me all sorts of other things I didn’t want to know and I won’t repeat them here such is the level of depravity. We eventually arrived in Palmerston North and he returned to being a courteous and polite bloke. Such is the nature of bipolar as a condition I guess.

It is only when I retell this tale that I realise that I was face to face with evil. At the time, all I could think about was the relief from not being harmed. I had got away from him without being hunted down.

To end this collection of stories on a high note, I recall reaching Paraparaumu by the shopping centre. It was the middle of summer. As a young student, I spent a fair amount of time in the gym. I was in pretty good shape and tanned with long hair. Without a care in the world, I attracted my share of female attention.

Soon enough, a car stopped with two ladies in a Datsun 120Y coupe. I squeezed myself and my pack into the back seat. Instantly, the older of the pair in the passenger seat turned around and started chatting. Turns out they were a mother and daughter who had just been on a shopping trip and were heading back to Wellington. The daughter was a little older than me and quite attractive. The conversation flowed and in amongst that the mother asked if a ‘good looking lad like me had a girlfriend’. Being a somewhat slow learner, I again answered truthfully that I didn’t have a girlfriend. The mother glanced at the daughter. She then got straight to the point by saying ‘Oh wow, that’s a surprise. But, my daughter doesn’t have a boyfriend either.’ She just left that statement hanging in the air like a pregnant pause.

The daughter made a show of being horrified but looked at me in the rear view mirror to see my reaction. It’s one of the times in my life that I felt a little trapped. I was in the back seat of a two door car. I didn’t want to offend anyone. Nevertheless, I felt a little awkward with the attention from them both. Because I didn’t respond in the right way, the Mum decided that in line with her blitzkrieg approach, that she would give me her daughters number and arrange for me to call her after my party that night, to hook up with her daughter. The daughter seemed very happy with this approach and so I just took the number and promised to call. When I got out of the car in Wellington, Mum hugged me for just a little bit too long. The daughter, not to be outdone, got out of the car. She gave me an all of body hug and a snog goodbye. She said she looked ahead to seeing me that night.

Like mother, like daughter I guess? Pretty upfront approach, and for them to work in tandem like that, was something that I haven’t experienced again.

Hitch hiking back then was wild. I learnt a lot by being exposed to people I would never have usually connected with. At different times I was terrified, disgusted, fascinated, and had my ego stroked along with a few other things! But I learnt a lot and this added to my life perspective as travel stories often do.