mmg.com.au

For most people, the road is a good metaphor for the twists and turns of life but for John Cadoret, who has been walking around Australia for the past 35 years, the road is much more than that.

The 57-year-old says he walks to avoid the complications of life — whether the hardships are brought on by relationships, jobs or raising children.

Passing through Barooga last week, John spent Thursday night sleeping in a ruined dairy on Barooga-Mulwala Rd.

‘‘I was lucky to have found shelter at all. Otherwise I’d be sitting there with some plastic over my head,’’ he said.

That isn’t uncommon for the wanderer, who has spent three or four days at a time without any shelter. When he does find some, it is usually behind a bush or tree or under a bridge where, on several occasions, he has woken up to water lapping his feet.

When asked if he worried about crossing unsavoury characters, John said he had never thought about it.

Ironically, others might judge John as being unsavoury due to his unkempt appearance. He doesn’t shave but trims his hair, beard and nails with a pair of all-purpose scissors.

Taking off the akubra he had swapped with a man near Tamworth, John reveals the hairstyle he fashioned for himself that morning. It is a bit uneven, like a cluster of paddocks seen from an airplane.

Walking 15km to 20km a day on average in a pair of black leather shoes, John says he is lucky to get three months out of his op shop footwear.

‘‘The shortest was a day. I think someone had super glued the soles back on,’’ he said.

John hasn’t always been one to keep in touch. When John first started walking, he disappeared from his family for more than 15 years without a phone call or a letter to tell them he was alive.

John thinks his mum will never forgive him for it. Nowadays he writes to his mum once a month and calls his sister.

He stopped walking for three months in 2009 when his father on the Sunshine Coast was losing his battle to cancer.

‘‘It was a gift to him, it was a gift to me too,’’ he said.

John grew up in Minyip, near Horsham, and spent four-and-a-half years working in a bank in Melbourne before taking a three-month holiday and never going back.

On the road with spare clothes, books, tucker, and hessian bags, John has carved out his route through southern Queensland and Victoria.

Living off coins he finds on the side of the road and the odd sandwich or coke donated by passers-by, John gets by on noodles, baked beans and spaghetti. But those rations become crusts of stale bread for a week or two when he is really desperate for money.

With books and a radio that picks up an FM signal when he holds the aerial, John says he is never lonely, describing his overall feeling as one of contentment. He says it’s a feeling he can’t get from ordinary life.

‘‘I doubt I’d fit in with that too well. I’ve got my own pace,’’ he said.

‘‘I just take things as they come, like the next road, the next bend, the next hill.’’