With Every Step Read online

  Next day his troubles began. When he stopped for lunch he had ‘a hardcore shooting pain up both my shins. It was that bad I should have stopped but wanted to get to the next town of Conara.’ He took some Panadol Forte and reached the village at 6.30 pm but it was tiny and had no shops. He thought that if he was going to have a rest day he wanted to be in a large enough town so decided to battle on for another 11 kilometres to Campbell Town.

  ‘That turned out to be the longest 11 kilometres of my life. I got a couple kilometres up the road and realised that I was fucked up. Both sides of the road were lined by water-filled ditches and barbed-wire fences so I started thinking about going back, but backtracking is never an option. I became desperate and had my eyes peeled for somewhere to sleep. I saw a “heavy vehicle checking station 1 kilometre” sign and thought I was in luck, but when I got there it was nothing more than a bitumen driveway next to the road. I stopped to rest and things started to become dire, I was in the worst pain I’d been in for a very long time and was thinking, “What have I done?” I ate the other two caps [painkilling capsules] my mate gave me, which I knew wasn’t a good idea after the six Fortes I’d just eaten.

  ‘A cracker rainbow emerged and the painkillers kicked in; all the traffic seemed to disappear and rays of sunshine were poking through the clouds, it was all quite surreal. Next thing it got dark and my hands went numb and I wandered straight into the oncoming lane, only for a minibus and trailer to swerve, narrowly missing me. It snapped me out of my zonked-out surrealism and back to a world of hate and pain. I stopped and shifted everything heavy right up the front of my pram so I could slouch a lot of my body weight onto the handlebars and just shuffle my feet along. I had never felt so relieved to reach town. There was only a café/pizza place left open so I went in to order. The young bird said, “Sorry, we are closing,” but the chef out the back could see by the look on my face I was in all sorts and said he would make me one.

  ‘I sat there, head in my hands in disbelief, until she brought out my pizza. I asked if there was anywhere to camp and she put me onto a paddock down the end of town where all the caravans park. I ate as I shuffled along in the dark, and a car stopped to give me my first donation for the day. I made it to the paddock and camped against the neighbours’ fence away from the nomads. I was out to it within minutes of getting the tent up and I couldn’t even manage to finish a pizza, which was the worst sign yet.’

  DAYS 42–46, 6–10 FEBRUARY 2011

  LAID UP IN CAMPBELL TOWN

  The extent of his shin soreness hit him between the eyes, literally, when Cad rose to relieve himself next morning. Going to take his first steps he fell flat on his face and had to pee while on in his knees. He hobbled into town to find a chemist, only to discover it was closed on Sundays. He limped the kilometre back to his free camp on the south end of town on the Midland Highway, next to a convict-built bridge over the Elizabeth River. It would remain his home for almost a week.

  He immediately searched for calf-muscle stretches on YouTube to relieve the pain and spent an hour doing them before applying icepacks to each leg. Later, he hobbled back to town to go to the toilet and had to rest in the park for half an hour before he could get back. He knew he was in trouble and didn’t move for the rest of the day, with Norman, the Irish wolfhound from the neighbouring property, keeping him company through the fence. ‘It’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen, and is the same size as the two miniature horses he is running around with. They all play together, chasing each other up and down, it’s hilarious.’

  Despite the rest and plenty of anti-inflammatory tablets he hadn’t improved and knew he had to get to the Campbelltown hospital on the Monday and, unable to get a lift with any of his fellow campers or hitch a ride on the highway, he had to walk all the way. After initially being told he would have to wait four hours to see a doctor, the receptionist and nurses recognised him from the Examiner’s front-page article published that day and fitted him in when the doctors returned at 2 pm. It was a waste of time and considerable effort; he was told by the doctor that he had shin splints and there was nothing for it but rest, and Cad had to convince her to at least give him more painkillers and anti-inflammatories.

  He perked up when a seventy-five-year-old nomad from Western Australia came over for a chat and had him in raptures with his many yarns. ‘He was a funny old bloke and all he talked about was trying to root this bird or that one, and he was going to Amsterdam soon and was going to try to root some bird there. He rides around living off his pension and eats sardines and crackers every single night for dinner. I cut the top off a water bottle for a cup and went halves in a longneck with him while he told me stories; he was on his third lap of Oz.’

  Next day Andrew went into one of the three antique shops in Campbelltown and bought an old potty for $20 and sent it to Owen near Batemans Bay to add to his collection. ‘It cost a fortune to send but it’s cool cause he is the biggest mad dog I’ve met so far.’

  I’d offered to shout him a couple of nights at a pub but he reckoned he couldn’t justify $65 a night, so he went back to his free camp and iced his legs every hour until 8 pm, but there was little improvement.

  A local girl, Sahra, came over and invited Cad to a barbeque that evening at her house and he was more than happy to have some company. He met the family she was staying with who ran Coopers of Campbell Town, a saddler and the local stockists for R.M. Williams gear. Sahra (who wrote to us a beautiful letter after Andrew’s death) was a policewoman in Sydney who’d left the service and was working in the Tassie town as an apprentice chef. They struck up a great friendship.

  Just to top off Andrew’s predicament, next day the local policewoman arrived at the field Andrew had camped on and gave him his marching orders; the council had complained that the area was set down for caravans and campervans only, not free campers. ‘I said, “I can’t walk so what am I meant to do?” She said, “Sorry, I know what you’re up to but I’m just doing my job.”’

  DAY 47, 11 FEBRUARY 2011

  CAMPBELL TOWN TO TUNBRIDGE (28 KM)

  Andrew had no choice but to bow to his eviction notice and hobble on in pain towards Hobart. He made it to historic Ross ten kilometres down the Midland Highway and rested, surprised that his legs weren’t too bad. It was a false dawn; ten kilometres further and he was in severe pain and decided that was enough for the day. But the road was lined with barbed-wire fences protecting properties, with every gate padlocked, so he couldn’t find a place to camp and had to endure another seven kilometres before he found the next laneway.

  ‘Seven long painful kilometres later I got off the road and threw my tent up, ate a can of spaghetti and crawled in to die. My legs were as bad as when I reached Campbell Town so I knew I’d be hitching to Hobart in the morning. It was the coldest night by far and I woke up a shivering mess. I didn’t dare get out in the rain to get more clothes so just tucked up into a ball, pulled the end of my bag closed and shivered myself back to sleep.’

  DAY 48, 12 FEBRUARY 2011

  HITCHED FROM TUNBRIDGE TO HOBART

  With the back of his solar panel bearing the message ‘Hobart Hospital’, it took Andrew an hour to attract a lift from Don and Jill in an old Mazda 929 station wagon, which was just capable of fitting Redge in between suitcases. Let’s just say he had an interesting discussion about religion with devout Christian Jill for most of the way before departing with a Bible in hand; after their generosity, he had decided he could not upset her by declaring he was an atheist. He was extremely appreciative that they detoured to the hospital.

  Cad thought maybe Jill had convinced God to smile on him when, after little over a minute in the casualty ward, a hot young blonde nurse fetched him. The doctor gave him the news that his problem was muscular (shin splints, as he expected) but he needed more than the week’s rest he’d just been forced to endure and, she claimed, to halve his intake of anti-inflammatory drugs as the quantity he was consuming was not healthy.

  After finding
a hostel and loading himself up with vitamin supplements, hoping to help his legs, Cad didn’t hit his bed until 5.30 am after drinking and talking endlessly with a gathering of backpackers, most of who were in Tassie for cherry-picking work, including Dutchman Dennis, who he would come across again, and a girl from Taiwan, Alia, who had the hots for him, according to Cad’s diary notes.

  DAYS 49–53, 13–17 FEBRUARY 2011

  BAILED UP IN TASMANIA

  Cad went up-market and spent $120 on a hotel room for the night and went out with Alia and her friends for the afternoon. ‘Turns out I’d jagged the annual wooden boat festival and it was going off like a Jewish foreskin. There was a big stage with a band, stalls and exhibitions, boats of every shape and size lining the piers, street performers and people everywhere.’ He came across another walker at the hostel, a twenty-three-year-old student from Canberra who days earlier had had to be evacuated by helicopter from the south-west ranges in Tassie in bad weather.

  Down in the dumps at not being able to walk, Andrew hit the social scene instead, and his spirits lifted when the money for his house sale came through – he was cashed up and no longer had to live as frugally (although he placed a large percentage of the funds in a fixed-interest account).

  A mate, Adam Martin, and his partner, Tash (short for Natasha), were in Hobart a couple of days later for a wedding and they caught up. Enriched with diet hints from Adam and a local health store proprietor, Cad had stocked up with all sorts of protein powders and supplements, hoping they would help his legs handle the workload he had planned for them. In the end he learned that stretching down at the end of the day was just as important as stretching before he walked; taking vitamin C and magnesium tablets was also crucial.

  After four nights in Hobart, Adam drove him back to Launceston to spend the two nights he’d had planned in his birthplace. Still unable to resume his walk, Andrew had decided to head to Melbourne to rest up, keep an appointment at a tattooist and then complete his walk to Hobart when he was fit enough. They did a trip, with Dutch backpacker Dennis joining them, to the Bay of Fires in the north-east. Cad couldn’t believe how beautiful it was, ‘like something out of the Caribbean’.

  DAYS 54–62, 18–26 FEBRUARY 2011

  BACK TO MELBOURNE

  Andrew decided to fly back to Melbourne from Launceston, the pram and his gear packed into a bike box, and was surprised that it all weighed 45 kilograms,; that meant he’d regularly been pushing around 70 to 80 kilograms on the highways once he added food and water. It also meant he was facing $15 per kilogram for the extra 25 kilograms ($375), but one of the airline staff had read about his walk and squared it off at $100. From Tullamarine he caught a cab straight to the tattooist, only to realise thirty minutes into the ink job that he had left a bag at the airport carousel! He called the airline to rescue it.

  Andrew had arranged to stay at the share house of Indi, one of the bicycle couriers he’d met at Lakes Entrance, and spent the next nine nights in Melbourne, which gave him twenty days’ break from his walk. He visited a physiotherapist, who told him she didn’t think he was suffering shin splints but muscle tear; he had a couple of sessions, which helped, and was referred to a podiatrist, who told him he had collapsed arches and fitted him with orthotics for his shoes and gave him some stretching exercises to follow.

  More time was spent at the tattooist than caring for his injured legs, however; he had three sessions with Jaclyn and booked in to get a topless mermaid added to the extensive artwork already along both legs (including a sketch of the famous ship the Endeavour, and a workman’s boot to signify he was giving up ‘the tools’ as a carpenter), which would mean he’d have to get back to Melbourne from wherever he was on that date – yet another distraction that contributed to his walk taking a lot longer than it could have. The fact that he had to keep his newly created tatts out of the sun and also try to keep his legs in decent order saw him let go of $300 for two pairs of Skins compression tights to walk in. Paying that much probably hurt as much as his leg pain!

  DAYS 63–66, 27 FEBRUARY–2 MARCH 2011

  RETURN TO TASMANIA, TUNBRIDGE TO HOBART (133 KM)

  Andrew made his second Bass Strait crossing on the Spirit of Tasmania and originally planned to catch a bus to Launceston then another to Tunbridge to pick up his aborted walk. But it was Sunday and he’d made a commitment to return to Melbourne for the Friday night fundraising ‘alley cat’ riding challenge organised by the bike couriers to fund him a new pair of walking shoes, and the bus would take too long. Instead, he was able to arrange a hire car for the next morning; the manager, aware of his story, was good enough to provide him with a ute for three days at no charge.

  He drove to Tunbridge via a stop at Launceston to shop, and another at Campbell Town to say hello to Sahra. He convinced one of the Tunbridge locals to let him park the ute in his yard for a couple of days and was back into stride, just hoping that his legs weren’t going to rebel once they realised what they were in for again. ‘I had a massive stretch, taped my feet like the physio showed me, had something to eat and was finally away. I had mixed feelings about being back on the road after a spell – half of me was stoked and the other half was over it. I just cruised all afternoon, I didn’t want to come a gutser first day back – again! I just took normal steps all day. I had got into a habit of over-striding, thinking I could cover more ground quicker, but the physio told me it was a big no-no, along with sprinting down the back of hills.’

  He camped just short of Oatlands and it was the coldest night he had experienced since he’d left home, requiring him to wear three layers of clothes as he slept. It was raining when he woke, and freezing despite it being the last day of summer. Welcome to Tasmania! But he had to get on the road.

  ‘My hands were cold from the get-go and it wasn’t long until they were stinging like crazy. I had that many layers on I was sweating my arse off up the hills, but didn’t dare take any off because the howling southerly just cut straight through you. I couldn’t take it anymore, it got to the stage where I couldn’t even touch the aluminium handlebars because they were that cold. I stopped and cut the sleeves off my woollen jumper and tied the ends together with cable ties to make mitts – what a relief!!’

  After a stop in Oatlands, the weather turned even nastier with hail coming in sideways and turning the ground white, then it was sunny, then dark clouds would roll in again. Nevertheless he knocked out 39.5 kilometres before making Jericho. He found a spot a few hundred metres up a steep dirt road off the highway and camped, and if he thought the night before was cold, this spot was infinitely chillier. He slept in every piece of clothing, plus his rain gear, and was still shivering. He spoke to a local the next morning and she said if he’d wanted to pick the coldest place between Launceston and Hobart, he just had.

  He walked well into the next night, in heavy rain, so he could get to the outskirts of Hobart and camp for the night then get to the city centre next day and bus it back to Tunbridge the next afternoon to pick up his borrowed ute and drive to Devonport. For some stupid reason, considering he needed to nurse his legs back into the routine, he walked until 3 am after deciding to reach the city centre that night, making it a 69-kilometre leg.

  ‘I crossed the River Derwent at Bridgewater and had to hang onto my hat and solar panel, the freezing wind was howling up the river so much. I got onto the highway and had a few eerie kilometres in the dark. By the time I reached lights and civilisation again I thought I might as well go for gold and reach Hobart tonight. I finally reached a servo that was still open at about midnight and had a couple of Mars Bars and a Coke to try to wake up a bit. I grabbed four bags of ice and went and lay in the car wash across the road to get out of the wind and ice my legs. I had two bags under and two bags on top of my legs for half an hour until they were numb, it was freezing.

  ‘I climbed a killer hill at about 2 am and finally caught sight of Hobart below, what a relief. My knees started to hurt and I shuffled down to the main roundabout.
I decided to head a park and I wandered around for a while before throwing the tent up behind a building near the war memorial. Made myself have a stretch in the rain and finally got in my bag after 3 am, a broken man.’

  DAY 67, 3 MARCH 2011

  BACK TO LAUNCESTON

  Despite running late for his bus back up the highway, Cad couldn’t resist stopping in for another of the lamb shank pies (‘this time with chutney’) that had impressed him so much a couple of weeks earlier (‘with an egg and bacon pie thrown in for the protein’).

  He made the bus for Tunbridge and picked up the hired ute, but after hearing from the Mercury newspaper, he drove 105 kilometres back to Hobart for a photograph and interview (yet another example of being his own worst enemy). On the way back up the Midland Highway he stopped at Campbell Town for a pot of tea and a plate of homemade brownies with Sahra before finally arriving in Launceston, where he’d arranged to stay with the daughter of people he met while laid up in Campbell Town. Let’s just say his last night in Tasmania was a long, liquid and eventful one!

  DAY 68, 4 MARCH 2011

  TO MELBOURNE

  Cad was up at 6 am and drove to Devonport, stopping on the way to book a ferry ticket. One of the boat’s staff organised a free cabin for him, and while he waited for departure in a deckchair Cad was amused to see the bloke sitting alongside was reading the story about him in the Mercury. ‘I went to say, geez, he’s a good-looking bloke, but I didn’t bother.’ He slept all day except for a lunch break, abusing the one-serve buffet rule again, this time with a bonus plastic bag of bread rolls that he took back to the cabin.

  He had just thirty minutes between docking and the start of the ‘alley cat run’ organised by the courier cyclists in his honour, which was six kilometres away, so had to jog. ‘I made it to the river and was weaving in and out of the hordes of people. Everybody was staring, laughing and yelling shit like “run, Forest, run!” or “Go, Benny Cousins!” – must have been the Skins? I had to drag the pram backwards up a full flight of stairs at the St Kilda Road bridge and then legged the last couple of kilometres to the museum. I ended up killing it and got there in under forty minutes through traffic.’