With Every Step by Cadigan Neil;

Author:Cadigan, Neil;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

DAYS 295–310, 17 OCTOBER–1 NOVEMBER 2011

ROEBOURNE TO ROEBUCK PLAINS ROADHOUSE (766 KM)

After three successive 50-plus-kilometre days, Cad made it to his next bit of civilisation at South Hedland and was quickly befriended by a big Kiwi, Tom, who was the publican at the Hotel Fini in Port Hedland. Big Tom organised a fundraising night at the pub, which involved Cad again making a speech, something he had become comfortable doing. Yet he was very uncomfortable (just like his old man) when Tom called him up to sing karaoke. The good news was that Tom spared him total embarrassment by doing a duo with him; the bad news was that it was the Proclaimers’ song ‘500 Miles’. The fact that $1425 was raised softened his displeasure. ‘Tom is a legend, I won’t forget him in a hurry,’ Cad wrote.

The Pilbara was certainly the most productive region for donations, and Cad was accepting hundreds each day from those who stopped along the way, on top of the lucrative fundraising evenings at Eramurra, Karratha and Port Hedland; obviously, a front-page story and photograph in the Pilbara News and a television interview had lifted awareness of who he was and what he was doing. Contrasting that was the fact he felt dreadful, with a bad cough and chest cold, but that didn’t stop him walking a minimum of 40 kilometres a day for twelve of the next thirteen days while the thermometer nudged 40 degrees.

In fact, he took only sixteen days, not the planned eighteen, to get from Roebourne to Broome, thanks to an average of 48 kilometres a day on the logbook and one day off (at the Sandfire roadhouse), making it his most intense period since the Nullarbor. (Mind you, he’d had twenty-one of the previous forty-eight days off since reaching Monkey Mia with Josh.) The blisters on his feet were as bad as they had ever been, and the chafing was back in earnest.

He was physically and mentally shot in the last days before Broome, however the thought of relaxing in Fiji with familiar faces was ample incentive not to slow down. For days he could see storms to the north, and when he finally encountered rain for the first time in about three months he actually rejoiced, standing in the middle of the highway, shirt and shoes discarded, with arms outstretched with his head to the sky, screaming, ‘Yes. Yes! It’s not hot and there are no flies … Yesssssss!’

Andrew decided he’d walk only to the Roebuck Plains roadhouse, which was at the junction of the road to Broome and the Great Northern Highway where it took a right-hand turn towards the Northern Territory. He was done. He’d pushed himself enough. He couldn’t be bothered continuing by foot to Broome and would cover that ‘dog-leg’ on his return.

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