Aggressive Hitchhiking

Saturday, 21 October 2023

Ideally St Helens would be around an hour closer to Hobart - close enough to get there in 2 hours, but not so close that it doesn't feel like we've gotten away from real life.   

Jon and I try hard to avoid driving up here in the dark, but on Thursday the earliest I could get away from work was 6.15, so by the time we'd stopped for a pre-ordered kebab at Campbell town it was around 8.30 and quite dark as we turned off the A1 and onto the A4 which cuts through the Fingal valley and down to the coast.  Moments after turning I was quite surprised to see someone waving us down from the middle of the road. I expected it to be some sort of emergency but it turned out it was just a hitchhiker called Sam who was desperate for a lift to St Helens.  If it had just been me I would have just kept driving (once I realised it wasn't an emergency) as Sam seemed a bit dodgy but Jon reluctantly agreed and I didn't feel like we had a good enough reason not to take him - although I was extremely annoyed about his methods - he'd was just returning to St Helens after visiting mates in Launceston - it was not an emergency and definitely not cool to be waving people down on the road at night. 

So we set off again with Sam in the back (and with me still a bit rattled and annoyed) and then almost immediately we hit a wallaby. In different (calmer) circumstances I might have been able to avoid it but I couldn't do any more than jam on the brakes and we still gave it a hefty thunk which was awful.   If I was rattled before I was doubly rattled afterwards and spent the final hour of our journey being completely on edge and wishing we were there already.  Thankfully the rest of the trip was uneventful and we dropped Sam off in St Helens and returned to our house to finally unwind from the trip.   

It took half a day before I noticed that we'd really damaged the front and side of the car (poor wallaby). The light is smashed up and 2 panels in addition to the bumper bar and grill thingy are damaged. Sigh.