Covered in road dust and sweat, and eating shakshuka at the kitchen bench of a colleague wasn’t exactly how I envisioned rural life. A weekend ride to the foothills of the Snowy Mountains and an inclination for the scenic route came to a shuddering halt about 10km from the small town of Harden, in the New South Wales south-west slopes. My housemate Daniel’s motorcycle had cooked itself, oil-starved after hitting a particularly nasty pothole and losing a sump plug – we were stuck.
Rationing two cans of ginger beer for hydration, we walked up a hill in 40C temperature, to the shade and safety of a farm driveway. I knew the Rural Network columnist Gabrielle Chan lived somewhere in the area, filing from “near Harden” for years.
Thanking my lucky stars for the three bars of phone reception, I shot off a text: “Hi Gabi, any chance you’re at home this evening? Just had a motorcycle breakdown about 10km from Harden. I have family coming up from Canberra with a car, but wondering if you might know anyone who could help with towing the motorbike to a safe spot?”
If all else fails, I thought to myself, we’d call into the nearest farm to see if we could camp that night. Keeping a hammock and sleeping bag packed on the bike looked set to finally pay off.
Gabi phoned back. “What’s the number on the letterbox?” she asked.
A short time later, Daniel and I ended up at the kitchen table of Gabi’s house, which was miraculously just across the road from where we broke down. We rolled the bike through the red dirt, tucked it under a tree and wondered how on earth we were going to get it to the nearest mechanic, more than 100km away.
The breakdown led to the first of many unexpected acts of kindness, relying on the generosity of others to see us through the harsh realities of long travel, limited services and dangerous mobile coverage black spots.
Despite only living in Cowra, a small town of about 10,000, for a few months, a colleague at the Cowra Guardian loaned me her husband’s ute for a round trip to drive to the farm, tow the motorcycle to a mechanic in Canberra and return – all in the same day. It was a nearly 500km journey, involving ratchet straps, shockingly high diesel prices and a last-minute tow away from a mechanic who wanted to scrap the bike instead.
When my car broke down in Sydney a few weeks later, I settled in at a friend’s spare room and later in another’s warehouse. Under the flight path of jumbo jets, I spoke with Beck Carter, who moved to regional NSW in 2022 and found herself relying on others after being taken to hospital shortly after moving.
“We had to lean on people that we didn’t know very well,” she told me. “We’re two years in and we’re still finding our footing, still figuring things out.”
Later, Beck’s words came true. I made a social media post about the clicking noise and flashing engine lights coming from my car and a source turned friend, James Blackwell, reached out.
James had also moved regionally from a capital city, settling in Boorowa, a small town between Canberra and Cowra. We talked about car troubles and health services. He’d had a fall and didn’t need his car for the next two months while recovering from surgery, he told me, so why not borrow his and drop it back when my own car was repaired?
None of this sounds unusual to rural Australians. Rural communities have offered homes and spare rooms to flood survivors and coordinated evacuation centres and mutual aid, simply because it’s the right thing to do. We live with an understanding that the stakes are higher, the costs greater, when something goes wrong and the best possible help might be across state lines or over the mountains.
When I asked the Cowra newsroom if they would help someone who showed up at their door, every single person said yes. “It’s just what you do,” one colleague said. “You don’t know when it’ll be you next.”
My car still makes the clicking noise, despite nearly every part of the engine being checked and replaced. The motorcycle sounds far more agricultural, after two months of repairs and plenty of new parts too. Repair costs are in the thousands, not counting time lost at work and on weekends, catching a red-eye bus to Sydney only to drive five hours back home.
The bush is in desperate need of more skilled workers: teachers, mechanics, health professionals and tradies. For now, we can rely on our friends, but I’m hoping next time, I won’t have to.
Eliza Spencer was a reporter on the Rural Network and the Cowra Guardian from August 2023 until June 2024. She now works at ABC Rural
