@repentatleisure1952 wrote:
I was at school with 5 of the Milat family.
I used to hitch-hike Mildura-Sydney-Mildura in my younger days.
I was often dropped off at the start of the motorway near Liverpool for my high-hiking home. Did that about half a dozen times.
Hitching to Sydney was not as hard as it would seem. However, there is one ride I remember like it was yesterday. Iโd got to Wagga Wagga easy enough, then a driver said heโd take me to Tarcutta as many people stopped there on the way to Sydney.
I was there in town with the thumb out for a short while when a Ford panelvan pulls up. The rear windows were covered in white sticky backed contact like material. The guy said he could take me to Berrima. OK, โmost of the way to Sydneyโ I thought. When he opened the back of the panelvan for me to put in my backpack I could see it had racking in there with what looked like stretchers with blue (empty) plastic bags on them. I started to throw my backpack in before I could process what was inside.
I started walking around to get in the front seat and the guy tells me the passenger door doesnโt work and I would need to get in through the drivers door. Ok, Iโve had worse rides, so I get in.
Some time down the highway the driver tells me that the vehicle is a mortuary ambulance. He tells me that he has petrol engine with gas tank conversion that can get him from Brisbane to Melbourne without stopping.
Now, this is all before any bodies were found in the backpacker murders, but I got creeped out big time. I was checking out the passenger window for a possible escape route from the vehicle.
We pulled into Berrima and I couldnโt get out of that panelvan quick enough.
Some years later they started discovering bodies in Belanglo Forest. They had a public appeal for anyone to phone in anything that might help the investigation. I called the hotline and told them of my hitch-hiking ride that had spooked me for years. The panelvan was the ideal vehicle for disabling a backpacker in one part of NSW and transporting them hundreds of kilometres to Belanglo.
When they asked me what the driverโs name was I replied with โIvanโ. This was long before Ivan Milat got arrested. The day he was arrested and his name was released to the public I was instantly physically ill. I was vomiting so much that I ended up dry-reaching.
It was only when I saw the photo of Ivan Milat in the media that I relaxed . . . it was not the same guy! The guy that gave me a lift was shorter, tubby, grey haired and clean shaven.
I still count my blessings that in all my hitch-hiking days I had no problems . . . just that one spooky experience.
I havenโt hitched for years, but did hitch extensively in NSW and WA, all through NZ, a bit in Canada and short rides in Mexico in my younger days.
