Mario Vallejos is known to many long time locals as the former Director of Community Services at Kiama Council.

His memoir will show them a different side, as it tells of his travels as a young man across South America to his final destination, Australia.

“It is written through the socio-political lens that captures the turbulence of the 60’s in South America and that ultimately motivated me to seek greener pastures Down Under,” he says.

Mario left Chile forever in 1968. As a 21 year old university student, he saw a newspaper headline ‘Che Guevara Captured and Killed in Bolivia’ and his life immediately changed.

“That piece of news was the turning point of my life,” Mario writes in Hitchhiker to Australia: Short Stories of a Long Journey of Survival and Determination to Reach a Far Away Land Without Knowing How to Get There.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay were overthrown or displaced by US-aligned military dictatorships.

Tens of thousands of political prisoners were detained, tortured and executed. Many of them were university students.

The execution of Bolivian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, the economic conditions in Chile at the time, and the American CIA’s imperialistic operations against the country’s Socialist President Dr Salvador Allende (who ultimately died in 1973 in a CIA-backed coup d’état) led to Mario’s decision to go.

Che Guevara's death led Mario to Australia

“I wanted to leave this country because I could see it was not going to change,” he says.

“I was very upset with the system and lifestyle in Chile. I just couldn’t see a future for myself there.

“In South America, Che was killed, then Allende was killed. At least in Australia when they had a coup, they only dismissed their Prime Minister,” says Mario about the dismissal of the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975.

Mario was a dreamer.

He loved the freedom on hitchhiking and often used this method to travel to and from home and university.

So when he decided to leave, he planned to hitchhike his way to Australia.

“I had no money, no English. I was just a 21 year old boy who wanted to travel.”

His interest in Australia came from a high school biology class. He found platypus and kangaroos mesmerising.

“In the 1960s, no-one knew anything about Australia.

“When I told my friends that’s where I planned to go, they saw it as a joke. Then I was even more determined to make that dream a reality.”

Fortunately, Mario met a friend who had studied in the US and spoke English.

“Timi thought going to Australia was a great idea. I had the desire, but I didn’t know how to do it. He was a critical part of my move to leave Chile.

“But we still didn’t have any money. So, we thought we would hitchhike. We went to Valparaiso, no boats. To Peru, no boats. To Ecuador, no boats.

“Eventually we found a boat that brought me to Australia.”

Each chapter details his adventures through South America, the Pacific Ocean and then Australia, a journey of more than 55,000km.

The stamps in his passport jogged his memory to provide clues to the dates when he crossed borders and landed in new cities. His adventures continued in many parts of Australia before he finally settled in Kiama in 1968.

He is now surrounded by his wife Cindy and her daughter, two sons from a previous marriage and many grandchildren.

He hopes to commit to paper the years from 1968 to now to share with his readers his experiences in Kiama.

“This book is a very important child for me that has now been born,” he says.

Hitchhiker to Australia by Mario M. Vallejos is available at Bouquiniste in Kiama or online at Amazon.