The Kindness Report #22: They Crossed Australia on Nothing but Strangers’ Kindness

William Pertek and Manek Miquel were 21 years old, French, and standing by the side of a road in Queensland with a handwritten cardboard sign and a plan that most people in their lives had already written off.

“You will not do it,” a friend had told them before they left. “It’s not possible.”

They did it anyway.

The Plan

The idea was simple, if not easy: hitchhike across Australia. Not a short stretch of coastline or a weekend trip between cities – the full thing, from Queensland in the east all the way to Broome in Western Australia’s far north. Roughly 5,000 kilometres of outback highway, roadside service stations, and unfamiliar cars with strangers at the wheel.

They carried backpacks, a shared tent, and cardboard signs with their next destination written on them. No flights, no buses, no rental cars. Just their thumbs, their signs, and whatever came next.

Ten Hours in Camooweal

Hitchhiking, Pertek admitted, was harder in Australia than in other countries. The distances between towns are enormous. Traffic is sparse. And in some states it’s actually illegal.

Their longest wait came in Camooweal, a tiny Queensland town near the Northern Territory border, the kind of place where the service station is the town and the next settlement is hours away. They stood outside, sign up, for around ten hours before a car finally stopped.

“This famous town, empty town – we waited 10 hours,” Pertek recalled.

That kind of wait could break a person’s nerve. It didn’t break theirs.

What Strangers Did

Here’s the part of this story that earns its place in the Kindness Report.

Pertek and Miquel completed 5,000 kilometres of outback Australia largely on the goodwill of people who had no obligation to stop, no reason to help, and nothing to gain from doing so.

“Almost everyone offered food, drink, or help for something,” Pertek said.

One driver (somewhere on that long road, in that enormous country) noticed that the boys’ tent wasn’t up to much and bought them a new one. Just bought it. A stranger, investing in the comfort of two French twenty-one-year-olds he’d just met and would never see again.

Two women gave them 40 Australian dollars specifically to buy new sleeping bags.

Others fed them, gave them water, invited them into their cars for hours at a stretch through some of the most remote country on earth.

The Thing About Getting in a Stranger’s Car

It would be dishonest to write this story without acknowledging what Kimberley Police Superintendent John Hutchison had to say about it: don’t do it. You don’t know who’s driving. It could be someone dangerous.

He’s not wrong to say it. And Pertek and Miquel weren’t naive about it either.

“Talking to lots of people before you get in the car, you feel safer,” Miquel said.

They took their time. They paid attention. They made judgment calls, one lift at a time, across 5,000 kilometres.

And the overwhelming reality of those 5,000 kilometres, the thing that came through every story they told afterward, was not danger. It was generosity. Ride after ride, stranger after stranger, offering food, money, shelter, company.

The Larger Thing

There is something quietly remarkable about what hitchhiking, at its best, actually is. It’s a transaction with no currency, no contract, and no obligation on either side. The driver doesn’t have to stop. The traveller has nothing to offer in return. The whole thing runs entirely on the human instinct to help someone who needs it, and the willingness to trust a stranger enough to let them in.

Pertek and Miquel crossed an entire continent on that instinct. A tent appeared because someone noticed they needed one. Sleeping bags arrived because two women decided forty dollars was worth spending on people they’d never met. A hundred strangers pulled over because a cardboard sign and two young faces were enough.

Their friend said it wasn’t possible.

It was possible. Australia made it possible, one driver at a time.

Missed previous Kindness Reports? Read them here: The Kindness Report

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Source: Times of India — Two French friends hitchhiked 5,000km across Australia