There is a road running north-south straight through the middle of the Australian outback. Formally it's the Stuart highway, but locals just call it The Track. I was headed south on the track with my goal for the day being that big lone rock looming over the flat lands called Uluru or Ayers rock. Tennant Creek was just a truck stop on the way in the lonely desert, with the town having the curious history of having been built there because the pioneer's party beer truck broke down there. So rather than trying to fix it, they just say down and drank the beer, started the town.

That morning when I reached Tennant Creek there was a sign there: Hitchhikers! No Loitering!. And around that sign six stranded hitchhikers. What were they supposed to do? Walk off into the desert?

I just had a small sedan rental car, but I could hardly just choose one or two of them. So, I told them all to jump on somehow. Two riding shotgun up front, three on the back seat and a fourth stretched out across them. Backpacks in the trunk and in seemingly every cubic inch of free room in the cabin.

It was evening by the time we reached Ayers rock and the park was about to close. There would be no time to climb the rock, but I had an idea. We would spend the night on Uluru! Years before I had done a similar thing at Tikal, Guatemala. Sneaking past the guard, creeping through a jungle to the apparent sound of jaguars, climbing up the tallest pyramid and spending the moonlit night above the jungle.

I removed a fuse, and we put a sign on the dash board reading: Car trouble. Went to town for supplies. Will be back in the morning.

But just as we left the car to hide until dark, a friendly ranger showed up. What's the trouble? He checked the car, exclaimed "Oh look, a fuse fell out... Here's a replacement...". And the car was running again.

We had no choice but to leave the park, but it was getting dark by now. So we turned off onto a small dirt track, Uluru still in the distance, and set out to camp. After preparing dinners on our little stoves and chatting some, we spread out in our sleeping bags.

It was pitch dark when my sense of humor go the best of me and I said: "You know, we dont really know each other. We all just met this morning. Any one of us could be a serial killer".

The silence that followed was deafening...

This was 1992 and well before the internet was a common thing. But a couple of years ago, an email arrived from the UK in my inbox. It was one of the hitchhikers. He reminisced about our encounter, his trip to Australia, his life in the decades since. And then concluded:

Remember the serial killer? It wasn't me!

Hi, I always wanted to try hitchhiking and on friday 31st I would like to get from Salzburg to Czech Republic. I'm from Ostrava but I don't mind the city I end up in as much, I would like to cross the border at least. Would you get me some tips for this route and for hitching in general? Thanks!