One gay man. One ‘gay’ truck. 38 weeks travelled alone through rural Australia. And no iPod or CDs!
Why would anyone beside the hoards of holidaying senior citizens want to attempt this.
34-year-old Daniel Witthaus ventured out into regional Australia to reignite conversation about homophobia by speaking to locals for almost 270 days.
Witthaus is also the author of Beyond ‘that’s so gay’, a new educational resource dealing with homophobia in schools, launched a week before his departure this year.
After beginning his tour in late February, Witthaus is now on the home straight of his marathon tour; expecting to finish his journey in early November.
‘It’s been an insane 32,000 km drive, its been a remarkable drive to see all these things,’ Witthaus said.
‘People asked if I was going to leave on a bus from Melbourne or Sydney like Priscella, Queen of the Desert.
‘I said it’s less Priscella and more like the Leyland Brothers.’
Armed with his loyal 2007 Ford Ranger ‘Bruce’, Witthaus travelled to the west as fast as he could as he found the east coast generally led the national conversation on homophobia in rural areas.
‘It was really important to go around and collect the voices and experiences from the non-east coast populations first and then see what the east coast had to say,’ he said.
‘LGBT people are living everywhere and they’re thriving and making their way in all parts of Australia.’
When he first arrived in Perth, he said many people told him there was no LGBT presence north of Perth; but he trekked on and quashed this outdated perception.
‘Geraldton was really interesting, there was a thriving informal LGBT adult community, lots of people had moved to Geraldton after spending time in cities like Perth or Sydney,’ he said.
‘But there was this big disconnect with people who were born and bred there with people who did go away. We found that all these people who didn’t leave, felt that they couldn’t link in with the adult community; they thought their only chance was to link in with Perth.’
This was just one of the niggling details uncovered concerning the regional LGBT communities; a long overdue inspection that began more than a decade ago.
In 1999, the OutLink program was created to investigate the rising rate of suicide in young gay and bisexual men in regional Australia.
Tasmanian LGBT activist Rodney Croome was enlisted to investigate the crisis and brought Witthaus on board who at the time had been working with LGBT youth as a youth worker in Geelong.
‘What I think OutLink showed was there was great potential but people were crying out for skills they could immediately use,’ he said.
‘They didn’t want to hear about legislation that would happen in a couple of years; they didn’t want to hear about educational utopia in schools; they just asked “what can I do tomorrow in my class that’s going to make a difference for young people?‒
‘I thought 10 years on, it was bloody overdue to do something about this.’
So after almost nine months on the road, Witthaus’ hopes that he has at least stoked the embers of discussion on homophobia outside the metropolitan areas.
‘As is the Aussie way, there are lots of people dealing with this in good humour and they’re doing their best when they’re doing it tough in lots of places,’ he said.
‘People fiercely love where they are … which is why people are returning to regional centres because cities cannot provide them a connection to the land they love and care for.’
Now that he is almost home, Witthaus joked that he will probably have a mid-life crisis when he finally stops moving and will have a lot of dirty laundry for his mum.
Check out Witthaus’ incredible journey at www.thatssogay.com.au.
Benn Dorrington
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