In Waste I Wandered – Returning from Sydney

Tomorrow marks four weeks since I arrived back at home. I have plenty to share about my first month stumbling into a retirement trial. Before I get to that I’d like to share a little about my return from Sydney. This leg, like the rest of the journey gave me fresh perspectives on people. It gave me more opportunity to observe and experience the world beyond my doorstep and reflect on what I noticed. My whole journey was made possible, comfortable even, by the abundance in the prolific waste about me. You can read about the final sea leg of my journey here.

Washing off the salt

We had one final run of the old diesel below deck. It rumbled upriver to the fuel dock and the boat’s home marina in Drummoyne. The rest of the crew took in the harbour views and sea breeze. I wanted to be away soon after docking so I took the opportunity to start on cleaning up. First my berth (sleeping nook), then saloon (living/dining) and finally the galley (kitchen).  One time-consuming task was erasing the pencil marks we had spent the last three weeks recording on the paper charts. This felt a little like erasing the memories of the trip. Ready for a fresh crew on the return north in May. Duties done, I said my thank-yous and goodbyes and stepped off the boat at 11:30am.

I enjoyed my first shower in several days and the odd sensation of skin that is not tacky. Anyone who has spent time in salt air will relate. I returned to my clean and colourful shirt I’d put aside for this purpose. If someone is good enough to let me into their car, I’ll pretend to be normal. How being odorless became normal for human animals is a matter for another discussion.

Out of the ocean, into the oven

The heat on land as I hoisted my pack and struck out for the bus stop was oppressive. We’d been largely oblivious to the ongoing heatwave while at sea, thanks to the thermal buffering of the ocean and the near constant breeze. New records are being set year after year as climate change is literally making its presence felt. An unattended alarm, getting louder and louder, yet still muffled by air-conditioned houses, cars, offices and supermarkets.

Stepping off the bus onto a bustling Sydney street snapped me out of any last slow-travel revery. Everyone was head down, in a hurry, eyes to their phone or talking into the void ahead of them, earbuds in. Coffees needed to be bought, meetings to get to, everyone’s task more urgent and important than others’ around them. There was constant noise, movement and flashing lights. Traffic sped through amber lights and passed by the footpath with just a handspan of clearance. The drivers with the same urgency and sense of importance as the pedestrians and scooter riders on the path.

I struggled to concentrate. My plan was to take the train to the northern suburbs, but I couldn’t look down at my phone for fear of bumping into someone or blocking their way. There were hundreds of words on the buildings and streets, but none stood out to me as a station entrance. I was feeling shame about my rising anxiety and apparent ineptitude. I thought about stopping someone to ask for directions but was afraid. They were all so busy. Instead, I stepped into a quiet side street, took a few breaths and another look at the map. With focus regained I looked up from the screen and immediately saw my destination where I expected it to be.

Alright? No, all rights

I boarded the train to Hornsby. From research a year earlier, I had in mind this was the northernmost station served by the electric commuter trains. It was where I planned to hitchhike from. At Hornsby the alley behind a corner store yielded a carboard box. I prepared my first sign, taking a little extra material for subsequent signs. I tidied the waste heap a little while there. It is always my goal to leave the world better than I find it. I studied the map for a suitable stretch of road approaching the northbound motorway. It was a hard to tell exactly from the map, so I walked towards and along the target over several kilometres with my sign and thumb out.

The heat of the sun was intense through the early afternoon. Few tree canopies span the multi lane roads, making the slim shadow of the light posts an attractive place to shelter with my sign out. As an hour passed by, my doubts rose. The previous longest I had waited was 35 minutes. My very first time in Gympie just 4 weeks earlier. I suspected the same problem here. Most of the traffic was heading for local destinations. I spent another hour pacing back and forth looking for better spots. Eventually, I realised that the northbound traffic was converging at the on ramps via right turns. This doesn’t work for hitchhiking, especially not when the roads are three lanes wide.

Bounty in Berowra

Back to the train station. I saw that the commuter train continues further north to Berowra. The road configuration looked much more promising there, so I set off. Someone had left half a party-size chip bag next to the seat I took on the train. I picked it up as rubbish, but finding it was half full, I enjoyed some afternoon tea. Those potatoes didn’t grow for 4 months, get harvested, transported, cleaned, sliced, fried, seasoned, packaged and transported only to rot in landfill.

After a 25-minute wait in my new spot, Dan* pulled over. He was only going a short way in my direction, but could drop me at a convenient spot. He was a warehouse manager for a candy wholesaler, commuting 40 minutes each way. After chatting for a while, some leading questions gave rise to him sharing that he was planning on cutting back his workdays to spend more time with his family. A little later, he shared that he wanted to do more of his commuting by ebike and train. I don’t know how much what I said had to do with his plans, but I was glad to hear them and wish him the best.

Magic in the margins

With the shadows lengthening as I hiked to the next on-ramp, I wondered if it might be cool that night. I began thinking about where I might sleep that would offer some protection from the clear night sky. Paying more attention to what was beyond the roadway proved worthwhile. In the margins between local roads, ramps and freeway was quite remarkable pseudo-natural beauty. A lush temperate forest obscured a clear, tranquil stream, birds calling and dragonflies darting about in search of mosquitos.

The percentage of groundcover comprised of rubbish increased quite conspicuously with proximity to the road. I wandered through the waste. Among it, I spied an oversized hoodie, just beyond the guide rails. It was a little damp and dusty, but I shook it out and hung it over my pack to dry. I contemplated gathering more rubbish while waiting. I decided not to, reasoning my chance of getting a lift was inversely proportional to the number of garbage bags I was toting!

After just ten minutes waiting George* pulled up and I joined him for his commute home after 12 hours work. A scientist, George is the quality, sustainability and technical manager for a major building products company. In his role he has significantly improved the product quality while reducing its cost and environmental impacts. He was somewhat cynical about the corporate expectations of milking ever more margin out of the same product, with little regard for physical limitations. Wanting to give him as much airtime as possible, I left mention of Living More with Less until we parted company at a service station. A pity, in this case, because he was keen to know more, but already pushing the boundaries for the time he’d been away from his family.

Fast fuel free

I ducked into the fast-food store to see if there was somewhere to charge my phone. Somehow, I never remember to charge it in the car. I was tempted to buy a vegan burger on discount. This is a kind of activism and something I don’t mind spending money on occasionally, creating demand for meat alternatives. I also reasoned I should be paying for the 1c of electricity and wear on the vinyl. Really, I was probably craving fat or salt and looking for a “better” justification. Seeing power points under the bench seats, I set my pack down and looked for a cheaper alternative to repay my use of the services.

I saw an uncleared table and set about tidying it up and wiping it down. There was most of a serve of chips and a couple of nuggets left behind. Emboldened by the principle that fear of judgement should not stop me from doing the right thing, I cleared the rubbish into the bin, wiped down the table and took the uneaten food back to my seat. I got my fat and salt after all. Satisfied I had left the place better than I found it, I used the amenities, refilled my water and set out back to the road.

Carving out a life

After just 5 minutes waiting, a rigid truck swerved wildly in my direction, the driver waving energetically. I leapt out of the way and let him pass, only to see he was stopped just down road, presumably waiting for me. As I approached the existing passenger swung the door open and waved me in then shuffled into the middle seat. With split firewood in the back, they were working 18-hour days, 6 or 7 days a week and living in the truck.

Two days earlier one of them spent a day in hospital, barely surviving carbon monoxide poisoning. He had been running a generator in the back of the truck, where he had his mattress set up on top of the firewood. Twelve fire trucks had raced into the service station after the emergency operator misreported a gas leak. He was very fortunate to survive without a significant brain injury. Despite their heroic and questionable work ethic, they were struggling to keep the family business alive. Their own young families were lucky to see them a couple of days a month, with the exception of a two-week camping holiday every Christmas.

After another forty minutes and pastel sunset through the rolling hills we parted ways at another rest stop. With night settled in I worried about my visibility alongside the road. I figured I could keep far enough off the road to be safe or set up camp until morning if that didn’t seem possible. Just as the road margin narrowed, I found a high-vis reflective vest. Now I was confident staying within the road corridor, so I continued on foot with my sign out.

A fork in the road

After a few kilometres and no lift, I had to decide between coastal route M1 or inland towards the train line. The coastal route would lock me into hitching the rest of the way. The inland route would leave the option to buy a ticket if I didn’t get a lift. I was feeling a degree of urgency to return to support Adam so I headed inland towards the train route. My sign stayed out on the chance of getting a ride right through to Brisbane. Most of the traffic now was trucks. Some earlier research revealed that most of the trucking companies can’t take unregistered passengers for insurance reasons. I thought it still worth a shot.

As I came to an exit ramp, I moved right off the roadway to find a safe way through. This took me past a Sikh langar. The smell was absolutely delicious. Their food is lacto vegetarian. There was probably excess. I quickly read up on the customs and apparently I would have been welcome if I covered my head. I wanted to be part of it, but I was shy and afraid of causing offense. Everyone I saw beyond the fence was beautifully dressed in cultural attire. I already felt creepy and intrusive, peering from the shadows. Instead I enjoyed the smells while eating an apple from the boat, regretting I did not have more social confidence.

Sometimes soft is hard

I walked on until I found a public field, sheltered from the road and streetlights. It had been flooded sometime during the last year or so. Untended, an immense mass of plant matter had grown and collapsed to a springy mattress. I could see how quickly Gaia was healing this wound, building fertility and preserving moisture.

I was tired from the heat and change of pace. The sides of my body ached from the unusual exercise of walking. I may be fit, from regular cycling, but I walk very little because cycling takes me so close to everything. As comfortable as this spongey bed of plant-life was below me, the existing lifeforms weren’t going to let my presence pass unnoticed. The mosquitos, in their thousands, were so determined to extract payment from me, they were getting through my socks and gloves. I left them to feed on something less mobile and walked another few kilometres.

I passed by an above-ground water valve with a fast leak. It could have replenished my water bottles in a minute or two if I hadn’t already done so. A look at the satellite layer on the map revealed a stalled housing estate behind the train station. I may have been fond of the abundance of life in the field, but the localised desert of an unused road now had a certain appeal.

From road to rail

It was a clear night with edges of the near full moon in sharp contrast to the dark void of space beyond. The road under me was warm still from the day, but I dressed in everything I had. I was glad I did. The oversized hoodie I collected earlier paid its weight, with the air temperature dropping to 8 degrees overnight. I had also been carrying a fist-sized emergency bivouac bag. A fancy name for a high-vis garbage bag. I’m not sure how much warmth it provided, but for a few grams, it seemed a worthwhile addition and kept the dew off my clothes. The high-vis vest from the roadside kept the dew off my pack.

Breakfasting at dawn I packed quietly and trekked to the train station. Having committed to the inland route and not securing a lift the night before, I reluctantly accepted taking the diesel train was the most reliable way to return swiftly and help Adam. The next service went as far as Casino then became a coach service into Brisbane. I didn’t want to use a booked bus service really any more than a booked plane seat. If full, a bus is better than a car for emissions and demand on infrastructure, but far worse than hitch-hiking. I didn’t want to add demand to the train service or displace another customer, so I checked at the station how many seats were left. It seemed there was plenty, so I paid my $68 then went making while I waited.

Getting creative

I retrieved some extra cardboard from a bottle shop that was only too glad to give it away. I tried scratching out a sign with my original marker, but it really wasn’t up to the task. The grocery store yielded a replacement, and I made signs for Kyogle and Brisbane. I added some black card and white pen, imagining at least some of my journey would be into the night. I figured this would offer better visibility. It also might look cool on camera. I made enough PB, houmous and salad wraps for breakfast, lunch & dinner. Then a few more with PB and sultanas for dessert and tidied everything away.

Somehow the idea of many hours resting on the train seemed more daunting than it had been on the boat. I wondered about finding a book. And there they were. A book exchange at the train station. An Amish romance novel piqued my curiosity. I have little exposure to Amish culture, or anything of its nature, except for coming across the 1978 book Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre when I went to register our domain name. She was actually Mennonite, not Amish. They might share a common history, but my understanding is the modern practices are quite different.

Time travel

I boarded the train shortly after 10am. The traveller next to me was asleep, sprawled and snoring. The herby smell on his clothes suggestive of a mild sedative. There were a couple of short delays through the morning, which I later heard the staff discussing in disbelief. Apparently, it is unusual to have police pursue stowaways and paramedics attend medical emergencies. Both in one day particularly so. For my part the journey was mostly very quiet and peaceful. The Amish book started out on a charming trajectory, but soon tragedy struck. The real world gives cause enough for dismay without the need for dramatization. I put the book aside and practiced my a skill developed on the boat – pulling my beanie over my eyes and being rocked gently to sleep by the vehicle’s motion.

Between several such time warps I soaked in the views of the countryside as we slipped through it. The stretches of lush rainforest embraced the rail corridor, branches and vines just inches from the window in places. The contrast between land clearing required for rail vs road was stark. But between these sections of charming and vital biome the cause of 90% of land clearing provided the real contrast.

At what price

Agriculture. In some places vast piles of felled trees had been pushed into windrows. There they waited to dry so they can be unceremoniously liberated of the carbon stored over decades in a short burst of wasted heat. The ground between the rows, shocked by sudden exposure to the elements at such scale and missing the metres deep roots, already showed evidence of erosion. Other stretches, long since cleared and now overgrazed, showed large scale land slips. Ugly slashes of bare soil on the steepest slopes like wounds slowly being pulled open, unable to heal under continued grazing pressure. The remnant watercourses, over-fertile with urine and dissolved topsoil, resembling watery soup topped with green sludge.

Abandoned workshops, small factories and local stores  in each of the small towns we passed told their own tales of the price of progress. I wonder how many of the former small traders and craftsmen now work for a global behemoth. How many are no longer fit for work at all? Mental health challenges wrought by our economic model take a particularly heavy toll on rural communities. This was to bring itself to light soon after I mused about it.

Bound by adversity

We came to a stop at Nambucca heads around 4pm. There was a freight service broken down on the only track ahead of us. The crew had no indication of when it could be cleared. Passengers were advised they could take the opportunity to stretch their legs. While on the train, the only people I noticed talking were those seated next to each other, presumably already connected. Once we stepped off, it suddenly seemed everyone had just enough reason to engage with others and so they did. The mood was almost jubilant, as people found common interests, destinations and grievances and made plans together.

A few people hitchhiked with a passing stranger, others organized rides with fellow passengers and their families from the area who came to collect them. Someone I spoke to had just finished with a far lighter book (physically and metaphorically) and was happy to give it to me. My experience with natural disasters and other events that offer an excuse to depart from normalcy have all been quite similar. As Rebecca Solnit puts it, sometimes such an event gives us the opportunity to escape a mundane reality and do what we really want to do, to help others and find meaning. Whether it is due to shared adversity or just a shared experience providing a hook for conversation, there is certainly some silver in every cloud I’ve passed through, binding human relationships.

A straw too many

Not everyone was seeing the bright side, however. A regular commuter on the service, a young woman, had the sense that one of the crew was hostile towards her. This third delay for the day put her over the edge. Out of my sight, she attacked the crew member, striking her in the face, then ran off barefoot along the tracks. The train service was cancelled for safety and police called. I later heard the young woman, a new mum in her late teens, was intoxicated and had been retrieved by the police and taken for medical support. I expected harsh judgement from the other passengers and crew, for further affecting their plans. Instead, all I heard was a surprising amount of compassion and concern towards her and her circumstances.

Coaches arrived at 7pm for the passengers that remained. They must have been booked from a local service. The drivers were surprised to learn some of the passengers were going to Brisbane. We were told some of the coaches would be traveling right through to Brisbane, via a handful of other destinations. Given how many spare seats there were, I didn’t see any point getting off in Casino and when I checked with a staff member they encouraged me to continue to Brisbane.

A bonus to Brisbane

On the coach, I continued a little banter with a handful of young European passengers bound for Byron as we set off, sharing with them footage of kangaroos on our footpath and back yard. Then I again made use of my beanie timewarp facility and woke up to discover we were not in-fact going straight through to Brisbane but the other coach beside this one in the terminal would be. I quickly came to my senses and hopped across.

I watched the time as we made our way up the coast before turning inland, wondering if I would arrive in time to get the last train home at midnight. Alas we did not, missing by 40 minutes.

I skirted around the cranes and concrete trucks assembling the ludicrously oversized new station entrance. Somewhere between a solar oven and giant aviary, I was certain there was to be 3 or 4 levels filled under the soaring skillion. Sadly, it appears to be nothing more than architectural license and spectacular waste of public resources. In the bright light of an alfresco dining alcove I made one more sign and freshened my breath.

Cultural contrasts

It was cool when I set off, but after about 3km walking, sign out, I was down to shorts and shirt. I returned the hoodie to the roadside, folded neatly over the back of a bus stop bench for the next person in need. The road carried just a handful of cars each minute, but I had heard that night time and storms are the best odds of getting a lift, all else being equal so I remained determined. Worst case it was a 4 hour walk home.

Only a few minutes later Liberty* from Tanzania pulled up. “Tan-zan-ya” he emphasised. He was appalled that people going the same direction would drive past me and not stop. A difference in culture for sure. He had just finished the late shift at the airport where his job is loading blankets onto planes of the upmarket carriers. He expressed real appreciation in being part of a work crew that looks out for each other and doesn’t distinguish between race or religion. While he wanted to drop me home, he accepted my explanation of living within planetary boundaries and instead dropped me on his route.

I walked the last 3km home, taking in the changes on the route since I had last passed. The remaining forest block in a suburb otherwise completely paved over with warehouses had been cleared. A dozen or so token trees, marked “habitat”, had been left standing. Nice one. Fortunately the current Columbian leadership has more guts than ours, recently banning all new oil and mining projects in their 7% slice of the Amazon.

What got me home?

Where was the abundant waste that I said supported me?

• Empty seats in the cars, trains and coach carried me
• Carboard packaging gave me signs and bedding
• Uneaten food on the train and service station nourished me
• A water leak would have slaked my thirst
• An unused road sheltered me
• An unwanted book comforted me and another unsettled me
• A discarded hoodie kept me warm
• A lost reflective vest kept me safe and my gear dry

I still bought food on this trip. I still contributed to fuel costs. But with more courage and ingenuity these could also come from waste for as long as society continues on the path of excess.

Meanwhile, my family was very surprised and elated to see me as I clumsily snuck through the back door in the early hours. I was a couple of days earlier than they had expected, and I quickly set about making up for my time away as best as I could.

*Names changed for privacy