Open Conversations with Strangers
When was the last time you sat under the sun, with a smile, and an afternoon free of obligations, and sought nothing but an open conversation with a complete stranger?
In Febraury of 2022 I strapped a tent and essential supplies to my bike and set out for the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. Over seven days I camped on sand dunes, in woods, and in caravan parks. People often dictate the Great Ocean Road as one of Australia’s most beautiful streches of road, and it is. But the conversations that I had along the way with complete strangers reverberate in a fashion that all of its beauty has not.
These are the stories of those people I met. Their names are changed for privacy.
Craig
He disgusted me when I first saw him. He was eating uncooked frozen hash browns out of a bag and making an awful mess of it. Potato spurted from his mouth with just about every chew, landing on his scraggly screwed-up clothes and the base of his chin. I was being hasty - my disgust turned into admiration when it occured to me that he simply didn’t care what people thought of him.
He’d slept on the cliffs by the beach last night, among the tall grasses, in his swag, minding his own business. That’s how he liked it, he said. Airbnb’s charging a million bucks just so you can take the ultimate picture for Instagram – “don’t understand it mate”. A van drove past that was refurbished and fitted out for van life travel. His voice rose as he took his hand out of the potato hash bag and pointed at it. “Would kill for that mate,” he said. It was the key that would take him to a life as free from the needs of society as possible, where he could sleep by the beach, or the woods, or the great Australian bush.
He wasn’t a quiet man, but calling him a quiet man served well to describe the essence of who he was. He didn’t impose his opinions or objectives nor claim to be a thing or another thing. It was someone who was enjoying the openness that came with two strangers with the sun on their faces and an afternoon free of any obligations.
He was from Bendigo. Grew up and studied in Melbourne city then moved out somewhere quieter – wasn’t a fan of the big smoke. Employment was a luxury for young people back then, “tough” he said. But for those lucky enough to find a job, you stood in great stead to set up a life of prosperity “coz houses were cheap back then, nothing like they are today mate.” Most people finished high school then fought their way into the workforce somewhere, earning their buck to chase the great Australian dream.
He decided that higher education was his pathway, social sciences, and after graduating managed to get employment straight away. Prudently, he saved his money and bought a property in Bendigo as fast as he could, and after some time, another. It went well for him, so he prioritised it as a career. Buying houses, doing them up, renting them out.
He fell in love in Japan. They got married, managed a prosperous relationship together, and had a daughter. “I miss them both a lot. But my daughter… I can’t stand being away from her.” They were stuck in Japan away from him, because COVID had shut down travel between the two countries. His daughter had turned 17, and then 18, and then his heart broke.
“She’s growing up without me. She became an adult without me.”
“Yes, it is hard,” he said. And then he moved the conversation on.
I saw him a few days later, in Lorne, by complete chance. It was my last day before I was to venture back to Melbourne. The Sun once again shone down on us as we sat on a hill above the ocean waters, as we shared a spot in the shade of a eucalyptus tree, as we watched the surfers below. We spoke more of my story, and what I wanted. I told him I was starting at a bank soon, and that I was scared. “You won’t know what it is until you do it mate. Until you live it. These kinds of things you have to find out for yourself.”
“Thank you,” I said. He asked for my full name this time, then repeated it back to me. I asked for his, and repeated it back to him. And then I got on my bike and left.
Wayne
He approached me peacefully and quietly. He sat down on the grass near me as I struggled to set up my tent. In a slow and soft voice he asked many questions about me, and seemed a bit perplexed – that I was riding my bike a long way with my life attached to the back of it, that I was travelling without a friend or lady-friend, that I had travelled to many countries at a young age.
He was at the beginning of a big adventure around Australia with his wife. They recently sold most of their belongings to purchase a nice RV to see the sights that Australia has to offer. He’d never been overseas, was excited for an adventure. In his old age he was frail but healthy. “I’m not running a marathon anytime soon, but it works.”
His wife yelled out to him, and when I say that, I mean that she yelled a shriek of sounds at him. He quickly got up and walked over to the cabin where she cowered behind the glass screen door. He chased the cockatoos and magpies away from the front deck of their cabin. Afterwards he resumed his spot near me on the grass. He had seen me laugh and explained, “she’s terrified of birds. Yep, absolutely terrified. Her brother gave her a box when she was a young kid with a dead bird in it.” And it reverberated from then until now, from a little girl all the way to an elderly lady. She was a chain-smoker, which made her bigotry of birds even more impractical. “I don’t let her smoke in the house,” he said.
He’d spent his whole life as a truckie. Right from the beginning and until the end, when he retired last year. “Yeah I liked it,” he said. “It meant I was away from home a lot, away from my wife and our kids.” He wished that he had more time with the kids. But he’d managed to - needed to - find a silver lining: “I think it made the marriage work, me being away a lot. We had so much space… fights never grew into anything too big because I was always leaving the next day or the one after.”
I asked if they had kids together. Yes, he said, and then began immediately talking about his granddaughter. They’d been housing her and her boyfriend as she finished high school. “I had to kick out the boyfriend… he was an idiot… a fuck up and a bad influence on her.”
But they’d done it. She graduated High School and they supported her all the way through. And then, they finally kicked her out, told her time was up, time to move on. He laboured through his words, “we decided it’s time for us now. It’s time for us to have our turn.” His face fumbled between guilt and assurance as his words came out as a penitence. “Of course it’s your time,” I said.
He once again asked about me, in particular my travel, and said he wishes he’d seen more of the world at a young age. He seemed envious but more so extremely happy for me. “Good on you mate.”
No, he was proud. A funny thing to recieve from a stranger.
Humey
“Call me Humey mate. Like the Hume Highway, but with a Y on the end.”
He was a soulful character. I first bumped into him at an events space and community centre for Indigenous Australians. It had the works: information sessions, stories, paintings, hunting and scavenging artefacts, a café, a gift shop, a zoo - and Humey.
He manned the reception desk in the gift shop. He was clearly of Aboriginal descent but had the clear stain of Anglo-Saxon – radiant blue eyes.
He joked with me easily as he told me about all the characters I could find in the zoo out the back, like they were his mates. He had stories about them, nicknames for them, and a deep understanding of their character. “Just watch out for Susan the wallaby… she might look calm, then she’ll nip ya! She’s a moody one,” he laughed.
He was open and enthusiastic and charismatic. Before I left he gave me emu oil for my sore legs and invited me to a barbeque in a few days’ time, down on a beach near Anglesea. It was actually a surf competition for aboriginal kids to participate in, “so they can feel involved, included. To get them excited about something.”
I went. Turns out he was running the whole show. He knew everyone, showed people where to go, gave instructions through a megaphone, introduced me to people.
The kids were like Humey, cast in varying physical combinations of aboriginal and Anglo-Saxon. Some had brown skin matched against blue eyes, and others white skin with deep dark hair and broad noses. In an odd way they seemed reflections of Aboriginal culture in Australia, an ancient culture which only comes in glimpses, which still struggles to find a place in its own country.
It occurred to me that Humey has walked ahead of these kids on the same path, as a white Aboriginal man, and that he’s trying his best to give the kids the things he had needed himself. Something to get him involved, included – something to get excited about.
Humey hosted the awards show at the end, concluding with a speech. The crowd sat on the grass, the kids, the adults, the volunteers, and listened intently to his words. He was deeply proud. He was enthusiastic. And we all watched on quietly, as a man lived his passion.
Martin
When he asked me how to turn the barbeque on I somehow overlooked his dog that wore a fluro vest, and that he was wearing sunglasses at 7pm. I told him to press the button on the front. “Ahh that’s all well and good, but I may have a bit of trouble finding the thing!” After properly assessing the situation, I got out of my hammock and turned the barbeque on. I apologised.
I asked him how much of the world he could actually make out. “All vague shapes and blurs, not really any colour,” he said. I asked him if he woke up one day without vision, and he laughed at me. “No, no, it was a very gradual thing. I started bumping the car into curbs and roundabouts, and I thought, wow, my driving is getting worse. This became increasingly frequent and I started to wonder if I really was getting old this fast. And then I almost didn’t see the lady walking her dog. That’s when I went and got my eyes checked.”
He was another retiree that had just embarked on a caravan trip around Australia with his wife. As he cooked his sausages on the caravan park barbeque, he spoke enigmatically and enthusiastically, as if he was a character from a Shakespearean theatre play. I barely spoke as he carried himself from conversation point to conversation point. It was his soliloquy and my ears obliged.
Throughout the conversation he kept talking to his dog, Ruby, as if she had been offering her own commentary the whole time. He was enthralled and fascinated by her. “She’s a miracle!” he exclaimed, “a vessel that delivered me back to independence.” He couldn’t believe that dogs were capable of being what Ruby was to him. He expounded proudly that when he’s inside shopping centres, she can sniff out elevator shafts for him when he says “elevator”. He retold the facts twice over just to make sure that I understood.
He began speaking about his love for teaching. Graduating University with a degree in Mathematics he realised that his passion lay in teaching, and found a job working in a prison teaching the inmates. “I taught them whatever they wanted to learn. French, History, Geography, English, Maths - I ended up learning a plethora of things.”
I honestly didn’t believe him - he must’ve put a bit of extra sauce on that story. Did you really learn French, I asked. “I spent my nights learning so that I could teach it to the inmate during the day. I almost became fluent.”
He said that the inmates were some of the best students he ever had. Diligent, attentive, and gave him their own teachings in the form of jokes and stories. It was a job that kept him tapped into the real world. Into real people and real experiences, while learning about new topics all the time. “It suited me perfectly.”
Throughout the conversation his wife came and went. At one point when she was there they happily reminisced on a caravaning adventure they recently finished in Ireland. I barely spoke as they bounced off eachother, telling me frightening and exciting anecdotes. “You should’ve seen the roads! They’re barely two cars wide in some spots. On one side was a rock wall, and on the other was a steep cliff going straight down to the ocean. And here I am with this big caravan, it was terrifying!” She said.
“You’re lucky I wasn’t driving!” he said. We all laughed.
She added, “Sometimes we passed big tourist buses, and all you could do was hold onto the steering wheel and hope for the best.” The tension in her voice showed those moments had not drifted from her so easily.
It surprised me that his wife oozed much of the same energy and excitement as him. She wasn’t so Shakespearean, but equaled it with a sharp wit and humour. Together they broke the stereotype of the withering and tiring retiree.
He was currently working on a project researching the first settlers in Ballarat, Victoria. Once again he divulged in great detail - about his findings, the research process, the procurement of old documents from libraries, and a conversation he had with an Australian History professor where he proved them wrong. He didn’t shy away from his pride, and his wife doubled down on it, “He knew more than this University professor who was supposed to be an expert in the field!”
Later on, as night set in, I approached their caravan to ask for an extension cord. As I knocked on their door I peered through the mesh window and saw them lying snuggly on the bed together - all three of them. When I laid in my tent that night it occured to me that they are in a love triangle. Perhaps a rather abstract one, but a love triangle all the same. Without Ruby, he would be dependent on his wife for almost everything, and I’m not sure the natural and genuine course of love can play out in such a scenario; would she tire of him and come to think of him as only a chore? Would she struggle with the reality of losing her own sense of self and individuality?
That as Ruby delivered him to independence, and elevator shafts, she also delivered two old lovers to love unimpeded.
Eli
She pulled up in front of me with full gusto. Stopped me in my tracks as I walked my bicycle down the main street of Lorne. “Where are you riding to?'' she asked.
This began a day-long interaction where we drank coffee, swam, laughed, and most importantly, spoke like two young 20-somethings about what we thought were the truths of the world.
She was from a remote, arid, mountanious town in Argentina. Three years she had been away from home, spending her time across multiple countries. A hippy type who didn’t agree with the status quo. “I can’t believe how people so easily make their careers the centre of their world. I guess some people might find their passion, but most just work away at a job they hate, just so they can buy a nice house in a nice suburb.” It felt like she was holding herself back, like she had been scorned by these very people and could unleash hatred upon them if she wished. A passionate type.
By virtue of her house being an automobile, she lived very close to nature. “It sucks when it rains because I have to stay inside the van and try to find things to do. But otherwise, it’s amazing. I love it.”
She had a whole cohort of adventures under her belt: overseas travel to exotic and dangerous places that made most people's hairs stand on end, a bicycle trip across the whole of New Zealand, and now living out of a van.
It was a blissful 28 degree day in Lorne, so we went for a swim at the main beach. When we were lying on the sand afterwards I asked her if she ever got concerned that she was casting her future into some realm of struggle and hardship, because she wasn’t building a career and generating wealth like most other people.
“They’re only doing it to ultimately arrive at a place of happiness, at the cost of wasting their youth sitting at a desk everyday. I’m choosing to have happiness right now, and spend my 20’s living fully, while I’m young and hot and have energy. I have faith that my passion, or “career”, will eventuate somewhere along the way. I think that if I keep doing what I love, then it’ll be extremely hard for me to not end up in the right place.”