Mic Whitty is cycle touring around Australia, stopping at war graves along the way.<\/p>\n
With his yellow postal bike laden with gear, including a hammock that he strings between trees each night, Mic can choose to wake up to ocean views, glorious sunrises or rolling green hills.<\/p>\n
It looks like an idyllic lifestyle \u2014 a permanent vacation, even.<\/p>\n
His friendly disposition and contagious gratitude give the impression that Sydney-born Mic\u00a0doesn’t have a care in the world.<\/p>\n
Warning: This article discusses gambling addiction, depression and suicidal ideation<\/p>\n
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Mic Whitty lives the simple life as he bike-packs around the world. (Supplied: Mic Whitty)<\/p>\n
The reality is that Mic has been living rough for 11 years following a chain of events that left him broke and sleeping in the Welsh wilderness.<\/p>\n
As a weapons technician in Saudi Arabia, and later as an IT consultant, Mic had a good income and a comfortable lifestyle.<\/p>\n
When accepting a new job led to imposter syndrome and a mental health crisis in his early 40s, Mic moved to the United Kingdom, where he began working in a youth hostel.<\/p>\n
“I was very happy, but I was on minimum wage,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I still had a champagne taste from my years in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
“But I was on a beer budget, so I was burning through my resources.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mic had a career with the RAAF and then a lucrative job in Saudi Arabia. (Supplied: Mic Whitty)<\/p>\n
Gambling creeps in<\/p>\n
With his savings quickly depleting, along with an inheritance from his parents, Mic turned to gambling in an attempt to maintain his lifestyle.<\/p>\n
“That was the beginning of my downfall,” he said.<\/p>\n
Gambling helplines:<\/p>\n
Mic had never gambled before but began betting on stock market predictions.<\/p>\n
A win on his first day set him on a costly one-way path that changed the trajectory of his life forever.<\/p>\n
“It seemed like a simpler way of ‘investing’ in the stock market, without having to buy and sell shares through a broker,” Mic said.<\/p>\n
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Over six years, Mic lost all of his savings and the inheritance his parents left him. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n
Very quickly, Mic began losing significant amounts of money.<\/p>\n
Trapped by the gambler’s fallacy, he was driven to “win it back” but was unable to recover his mounting losses.<\/p>\n
With his savings gone, and an eye-watering 18 months of rent unpaid, Mic felt increasingly alone, desperate and ashamed.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a spiral down,” he said.<\/p>\n
He anxiously waited for a call from his landlord, a friend, to query the missing rent.<\/p>\n
“As I’ve done many times before in my life when it comes to finances, I guess I just put my head in the sand,” he said.<\/p>\n
When that call finally came, it was a moment of truth for Mic, and he chose honesty.<\/p>\n
“If I’ve learned anything from studying politics and history, it’s like Nixon and Clinton,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not the original sin that they got in trouble for. It’s the cover after the lie.”<\/p>\n
From bad to worse<\/p>\n
Determined to repay his debt, Mic moved into the youth hostel where he worked, and with the support of his old landlord, came up with a payment plan.<\/p>\n
Still believing he could “claw back” his savings, Mic continued to gamble using the small amount of money he had left each month.<\/p>\n
“I had gone through all my money, my parents’ inheritance money,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That’s where it really started unravelling.”<\/p>\n
Stream Mic Whitty’s way out of the woods<\/a><\/p>\n After walking away from his life, Mic re-entered the world again and came up with an extraordinary project.<\/p>\n Over several months, Mic took money from his work to gamble and concealed it by “fiddling the books”.<\/p>\n “It spiralled out to where I’d taken out about 1,600 GBP ($3,300). And I had nothing to put back in,” he said.<\/p>\n It came to a head when his manager noticed what was happening and wracked with shame, Mic tearfully owned up to stealing the money.<\/p>\n He resigned and borrowed money from a friend to repay what he had taken.<\/p>\n Almost daily, Mic struggled with thoughts of taking his own life to end the intense shame he felt.<\/p>\n “I don’t blame any of this on depression \u2026 I got depressed because of what I did,” he said.<\/p>\n “I was in a pretty bad way.”<\/p>\n Retreating from the world<\/p>\n Despite struggling with daily life, Mic found another job and remained determined to repay his friend.<\/p>\n “I was just, every day, dragging myself out of bed to go to work. And when I wasn’t working, I was just staying in bed,” he said.<\/p>\n If you or anyone you know needs help:Suicide Call Back Service<\/a> on 1300 659 467Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN<\/a>\u00a0on 13 92 76Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 224 636Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890ReachOut<\/a> at au.reachout.com<\/a>MensLine Australia<\/a> on 1300 789 978QLife 1800 184 527<\/a><\/p>\n As soon as Mic made the last repayment to his mate, he skipped his work shift and walked out of his “old life” without telling anyone.<\/p>\n Discarding his phone, unlocked in his room \u2014 with a message for his friends to find \u2014 Mic then left all of his belongings and caught a train to the end of the line.<\/p>\n When he arrived in the small old mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in North West Wales, Mic walked off into the surrounding countryside.<\/p>\n With no tent or bedding, he found a secluded spot about 3 kilometres from town, and stayed there.<\/p>\n “As I think back on it now, it just sounds so irrational. But at the time I thought it was rational,” Mic said.<\/p>\n “I went for a week without food, and I went probably two or three days before I crawled down to a creek just to drink some water.<\/p>\n “The only way I could see getting through the misery of it all is that I, in my mind, knew that the end was nigh.” Mic walked off into the Welsh wilderness, not planning to return. (View above Blaenau Ffestiniog<\/a>, Andrew Hill<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n After a week in the woodland, Mic wandered into town to buy some food, but continued living rough, moving every couple of days to remain unnoticed.<\/p>\n Without basic comforts or entertainment, and with a makeshift bed fashioned from cardboard, Mic found sleep near impossible.<\/p>\n Boredom and rumination quickly crept in.<\/p>\n “I wasn’t sleeping at all really \u2026 it’s a very long time with nothing to do,” Mic said.<\/p>\n “And the nights are probably worse than the days. You’re just lying there, not really sure how long you can keep on going.”<\/p>\n Finding his way back<\/p>\n For about three months, Mic hid away from his old life, too ashamed to reach out to friends.<\/p>\n After enduring the uncertainty, isolation and monotony of living rough, things took a turn for Mic when he caught a bus to Aberystwyth, a small Welsh seaside town.<\/p>\n He spent a week feeling invisible until Mic noticed a Salvation Army church hall and the familiar logo of the Red Shield Appeal.<\/p>\n Desperate for a cup of tea after months without, he gingerly walked over, hoping he could find some hospitality.<\/p>\n A simple sign that read, “Tea and coffee. All welcome” led Mic through the doors of that hall where he befriended another man sleeping rough who took Mic under his wing and they enjoyed a hot lunch.<\/p>\n Now cycling around Australia, Mic can make his own cuppa with his camp stove. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n Over the weeks to come, Mic made more friends at the Salvation Army, including the town’s librarian, Catherine Taylor, who encouraged Mic to visit the library each day.<\/p>\n This gave him routine, a warm sanctuary and access to newspapers and books to occupy his mind again.<\/p>\n “Whenever the library was open, at nine in the morning till six at night, I was sitting in the library \u2014 six days a week,” he said.<\/p>\n Catherine’s kindness extended to buying and sharing meals with Mic.<\/p>\n “I even ended up begging a couple of times on the streets, and she would be walking by with her family and this would upset her a great deal,” he said.<\/p>\n “So she would drag me into a cafe and buy me something to eat and a coffee with her family \u2026 then she invited me to her home for a Sunday meal.”<\/p>\n It was a gesture that Mic decided to honour with transparency about his past.<\/p>\n “As soon as I crossed the threshold, I said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you \u2026 I stole money from work, and that’s why I’m homeless,'” he said.<\/p>\n Librarian Catherine Taylor befriended Mic, welcoming him into her home and the town’s library for refuge. (Supplied: Maude Wells)<\/p>\n To Mic’s surprise, Catherine replied with her own confession that she had Googled him, but in doing so, had discovered a Facebook page dedicated to finding him.<\/p>\n This revelation helped Mic realise that there could be a way out of his situation, and that many people cared about him.<\/p>\n It took some time to process, but finally, almost 10 months after first walking away from his life, Mic felt strong enough to re-emerge.<\/p>\n He posted a Facebook message letting his friends know where he was, that he was safe, and what had happened.<\/p>\n “The reaction to that, it still, nine years on, brings me to tears,” Mic said.<\/p>\n “I had so many positive replies and so many expressions of love.”A new purpose<\/p>\n During Mic’s process of reconnecting with his friends and his old life, he began pulling together his belongings that were stored in various friends’ homes.<\/p>\n While searching through a tea chest full of sentimental treasures, Mic found his grandfather’s World War I pocket diary, which had taken a bullet for his grandfather while he was serving in the Australian artillery on the Western Front.<\/p>\n After reconnecting with his life, Mic found his paternal grandfather’s 1916 war diary, which bears the mark of a bullet. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n With the diary in his hands, Mic was struck with the idea to honour his grandfather by riding his bike to Gallipoli, sleeping in a hammock along the way.<\/p>\n Once he arrived, Mic learnt that there are many war cemeteries at Gallipoli and he felt compelled to visit them all.<\/p>\n “I’d only really known of the ones we learned of in school; Lone Pine, The Neck, Anzac Cove,” he said.<\/p>\n “It took me a couple of weeks, but I ended up cycling on my bike to all [the] cemeteries that are on the Gallipoli Peninsula.<\/p>\n “I was quite chuffed for myself. I noticed that \u2026 in a lot of them, it had been over a year since the previous person had signed in the visitors’ book.”<\/p>\n Mic reached the Lone Pine Cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula in March 2016. (Supplied: Mic Whitty)<\/p>\n Discovering how much he enjoyed cycle touring, and realising he had “nothing else better to do”, Mic set himself a new and monumental goal.<\/p>\n “A bit like Forrest Gump, I’m now on a 30-year trip to cycle to every Commonwealth War Grave cemetery in the world,” he said. Mic Whitty is riding his way up the Queensland coast, hoping to arrive in Cooktown for Christmas. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n Mic’s itinerary takes in both purpose-built war cemeteries like the ones he visited in Gallipoli, as well as small-town ‘regular’ cemeteries where WWI or WWII casualties are buried.<\/p>\n If he sticks to his schedule, before the end of the centenary of World War II in 2045, Mic will have visited nearly 25,000 cemeteries.<\/p>\n “If I haven’t finished by the time I’m 80, I’ll just keep going,” he said.<\/p>\n “If I happen to die beforehand, that solves the problem of ‘What the heck do I do until I die?'”<\/p>\n Mic, pictured at Gympie Cemetery, has been cycling around the world visiting war graves and has no plans to stop. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennnifer Nichols)<\/p>\n On reflection<\/p>\n Almost 10 years since he started, Mick has no regrets and favours taking his trip one day at a time.<\/p>\n “I haven’t looked back,” he said.<\/p>\n “I absolutely love it. I would not swap this for anything else.<\/p>\n “It’s not about the cemeteries \u2014 it’s the people I meet along the way.”<\/p>\n While still technically a rough sleeper, Mic is living his best life on the road, wild camping by choice. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n Mic told his story to Richard Fidler on Conversations in March last year, and has cycled a total of 67,022 kilometres, visiting more than 4,000 war grave cemeteries.<\/p>\n This year, he’s been tracking his way up the east coast of Australia.<\/p>\n “I am aiming for Cooktown by Christmas, so if anyone spots me along the Queensland coast, please toot your horn,” he said.<\/p>\n After touring the war graves across almost 20 countries, Mic is now making his way around Australia. (Mic Whitty\/ABC Sunshine Coast: Jennifer Nichols)<\/p>\n As he reflects on those dark, isolated months sleeping rough in Wales, Mic said it showed him an inner strength that he didn’t realise he had.<\/p>\n “We’re all a lot tougher than we think we would be when tested,” he said.<\/p>\n As for that generous cup of tea Mic was offered by the Salvation Army, he still recalls it as “fantastic”.<\/p>\n “You know how some people leave a bit of tea at the bottom of every cup?\u00a0To this day, I drink all my tea,” he said.<\/p>\n “And every time, I think just how lucky I am.”<\/p>\n Stream the 20th Anniversary Collection of Conversations<\/a> throughout August\u00a0on the ABC listen app<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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