What Life Looks Like Without a Safety Net
I was driving through the countryside near Paeroa when I picked up a hitchhiker. He was a large man walking alone along a rural road, with no luggage at all. As soon as he got in, he told me he was homeless. Almost immediately, he moved on to explaining how he scavenged food from bins. He’d once spent three months in prison, transferred between three facilities.
When I lightly asked about prison food, he spoke enthusiastically about breakfast – even though he’d lost six kilos inside. Looking at his hulking frame, I wondered whether the instability of scavenging had taught him to eat whenever food appeared, and as much as possible. When meals are unpredictable, you might eat more, not less.
When I asked why he’d been transferred so often, he laughed. Once, he’d flashed a security camera. “Why put up cameras if you don’t want to be flashed?” Another time, he’d tried to hug a female guard. She hadn’t appreciated that.
The conversation stayed light, but the undercurrent for me was clear: keep him feeling respected and everything would be fine. He suggested games to fill the silences – spelling games, then *I Spy*. It felt oddly like a family road trip.
He had hitchhiked from Tauranga and was aiming for Whangamatā, though he was detouring. He was on his way to see his three children. Their mother wasn’t keen to see him. He planned to ask his sister if he could stay a night or two. His family, he said, didn’t really help him anymore.
He told me he kept a towel and soap hidden along a riverbank in Tauranga where he usually stayed. That’s where he washed. When I asked whether homeless people looked out for each other, he said yes – though one man had recently taken a large bite out of his soap. It still had the bite mark.
I dropped him at the Whitianga–Whangamatā intersection and drove on.
A month earlier, I’d stopped in Whangamatā to pick up a woman on her way to see a baby that had been removed from her care. I didn’t pry. It was nearly dusk and threatening rain. Her baby was likely a two-hour hitch away. As she spoke about her life, the rain began – sudden and heavy. I found myself judging her for starting hitchhiking so late in the day.
Before I let her out at the Whitianga–Whangamatā intersection, I handed her the emergency poncho I keep in my car so she could head towards Thames and then Coromandel. The rain stopped the moment she got out of the car.
She wasn’t a threat to me, but she was clearly a threat to herself. She said she had people who *might* come from Coromandel to pick her up if things went wrong. I couldn’t help thinking how long that wait would be, and what an imposition it would become – especially in the dark.
Not long before that, north of Tairua, I picked up another woman walking with no luggage. I coaxed her story out of her, but the conversation was stilted. She had no family support. She’d moved constantly. She’d walked out from an argument with friends in Tairua with nothing – no phone, no coat, no water bottle. The night was getting cold. She said she had friends who might let her stay in Whitianga.
As we neared town, she asked if I had money for food. It was the first time I’d ever reached into my pocket for a hitchhiker – the need was unmistakable.
The lighter stories exist too, though they’re less memorable. I recently picked up an Argentine man hitching fifteen minutes to work in Coroglen while his car was at the mechanic. He was shy about his English. I speak Spanish and teach English, but I realised what he needed most was confidence in English. I stayed in English until near the end.
Another time, I picked up a German woman at the Whitianga–Whangamatā intersection. She wanted to walk the Pinnacles and stay in the hut. I was already heading there myself for a day walk. Those two interactions felt like rare alignments – the Spanish speaker, the hiker, and a driver who spoke Spanish and was going to the very same hike.
Refreshing hitch-hikers are more common. The others are rarer, but they offer sharper insights into the cracks in society.
Some people are dangerous to others. Some are dangerous only to themselves. Many are simply surviving with fewer buffers than the rest of us.
I stop. I listen. Sometimes I give more than a lift.
And for now, I keep stopping.
Read more stories from Rachael here!
Words by Rachael Mayne
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