ROADIES, GERMANS & A JAPANESE ADVENTURER

When you meet a fellow traveler for whom the road is a permanent home connections are quickly made. There is a touch of the meeting of gypsies or of kindred spirits. Beyond the examination of each others trailers or the sharing of local knowledge is a sense of mutual pride that some cultural shackle has been loosened.

As a new traveler I seek support from the experienced ones. 'Do you miss having a home?' has always been met with 'not at all'. 'Are you sure?' with a resounding 'definitely'.

I have met some fascinating people whose lives are stretched between destinations rather than emanating out from them. The road itself parallels the traveler's personality, joining not only towns and cities but a love of landscape and a need for solitude, somewhere between the embrace of beauty and renunciation of society.

Meetings on the road are free of the social noise of the city. People's frailties and strengths, framed by the enormity of landscape, come more quickly into focus.

Below are snapshots of three fascinating encounters over recent trips.

KLAUS

Fittingly I met the first of them, an old German called Klaus, as he pulled into Hermannsburg. A stream of Aboriginal kids followed him and his two camels, Willy & Snowy, as they arrived into the old Lutheran precinct.

In 1994 a doctor told Klaus he would die from a combination of a bad diet, too much alcohol and high blood pressure. Klaus, in the long tradition of extremists, hit the road. After 3 months traveling it came to him loud and clear - this is my life.

So it is. The camels pull a motorless mini-van fitted with all his belongings. Actually only Willy pulls it because Snowy won't work. Klaus walks beside them at a cracking pace. In the Hermannsburg Precinct he was joined daily by little kids and for the week by a stray dog we christened Klaus.

Klaus was a complex old man. He fussed over his camels at night with cuddles and affectionate words spoken in German. Like the swagman John he is a minimalist - "If you learn to live on very little you don't have to take crap from anyone." Reminiscent of John's "if you have nothing you can go anywhere."

Klaus left with his camels for Western Australia. Dog Klaus didn't come that day or he would have joined the traveling band of one German and two camels into the harsh and beautiful world of endless walking.

MASAHITO

The greatest Japanese haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō, renounced urban life for nature, wandering the Alps for inspiration. He, like many solo travelers, suffered from a troubled mind and sought deep quiet.

Over three hundred years later, a young man called Masahito Yoshida follows in his tradition of walking in solitude. I met him on the road near Burra in South Australia as he pulled his cart from Melbourne to Darwin.

Through very broken English these are the shards of his story -  I work ... sleep ... work ... sleep ... no life. Now i just walk.

Sure does. From Shanghai, where he started a 16,000km walk through Asia and Europe to Lisbon. Then from Philadelphia to Vancouver and after reaching Darwin he will fly to Singapore and pull his cart to Shanghai.

I was in a pub in the Kangaroo Valley many years ago. It was just me and two old farmers. It was deadly quiet. Eventually one of them said ... I saw Dougie the other day, in his paddock ... many minutes passed ... walkin?.

A wasteland of silence lay in the room .. until finally the other farmer looked at him with an expression of delayed shock ... walkin? ... as though the thought was so alien as to defy rational thought.

God knows what they would have thought of Masahito Yoshida.

PETREA & RUEBEN

Petrea & Rueben don't have a home. They travel for half the year and for the other half work at Kings Creek Station in Central Australia. I met them in Wilcannia where Rueben was born and raised. He wears a T-shirt that reads I have no job ... I have no money ... I have no car ... but I'm in a band.

Memory joins the other things he doesn't have because he has early onset dementia.

They both remember how to have fun though. As 'The Roadies' Petrea & Rueben perform in tiny outback towns.  If Steinbeck was writing about Australia it would be with characters like these in mind.

They loved Tommie as only people with enormous hearts can. They loved Wilcannia as only people with compassion for the desperate can. They loved each other as only lovers can. I'll visit them this year in King's Creek.

There will be so many people like Petrea & Rueben to meet on this journey.

Fossicking around little towns and outback stations to uncover them is at the core of my mission.

c ya

Raymond