When I bought my Jeep I thought it would get me girls. Instead, it's' got me middle aged Dads who want to talk about four wheel drives.

These macho-romances follow a similar course. The courting phase starts Jeep-side. I'll be sitting out the back when I'll spot him, his sun-bleached baseball cap the first thing to come into view. His short-sleeved checked shirt is well-ironed and stretched across a belly that has just the right amount of meat pies that any Dad should have. His khaki shorts sit below his knees and above his ginormous calves which slide down into a pair of sandals. Classic. He spots me and slows his walk. His approach is subtle yet confident. His hands get suctioned to his hips. His walk arches around me, eyes slowly moving from one part of the Jeep to another, never at me. It's tantalising. This isn't his first rig chat. This isn't his first macho-romance. He slows his walk even further, in anticipation of his opening pick-up line...

"I like your awning mate. Where'd ya pick that up?"

"Aw cheers, yeah got it from Bushwakka" I reply.

He's in.

Then he rolls out his first date playbook, asking about my travels and where I'm from - "a place called Wexford, in the south-east, just an hour south of Dublin". I tell him about where we’ve been and what we’ve done. He's a polite conversationalist but he also has only one thing on his mind... closing the deal . Closing the deal in a macho romance, means getting to talk about his own rig and his own adventures. I'm an easy date so I put out and throw the conversation over to him. You can see his face light up when he gets going "aw yeah mate, been all over with her (his car), took her up the guts (of Australia) last wintah. Bloody great trip."

Often his wife will join and she will inevitably be called Susie. Susie is used to playing wingwoman in these situations and plays along for a while before making it just obvious enough they should be going. Bob (because he is often called Bob) spends enough time in the car with his wife to know not to piss her off so reluctantly agrees. He offers a strong handshake (the equivalent of the kiss at the front door) and heads off.

Of course, I would rather the jeep had worked for getting girls, and not these ute-loving men, but I've enjoyed my encounters with them. One guy told me about how he's shipped his four wheel drive all over the world, from South Africa to Mongolia which has given me inspiration. However, one must be careful not to fall for one of these guys, they'll use you for your rig chat and leave you high and dry.

It was valentines day this week and I didn’t get a single card from them…

Cape Otway lies on the southern most tip of the Great Ocean road. It's a remote national park with some of Australia's only temperate rainforest, and it sprawls south until it crashes up against the southern ocean. To get there, you leave the main road and follow a dirt track that slithers into the depths of the forest. White tree branches with no leaves hang over the road, a haunting tunnel that scares you a little in the dark but also says; "come down here, there's something magical". As you drive, the track deteriorates and your car bounces over the bumps making you feel like the cars that the LA rappers use in their music videos. Finally, at the end of this track, you reach Parker Hill, where a small wooded campsite is perched on top of some cliffs. Phone reception hasn't heard of Parker Hill and it was here, in this unlikely setting, that I had one of the most bizarre and wonderful experiences of my life.

I was sitting out the back of the Jeep (I seem to do a lot of that) somewhere between my afternoon snack and dinner. Mikey had gone walkabout and there was no one around. I was doing nothing - I've gotten good at doing nothing - just sitting there. When then, the faintest whisper of a fiddle drifted into my ear. It lasted a second and I didn't think much of it, going back to my doing of nothing. But then it whispered again. This time, the whispers had a form and I realised I was hearing The Sailor's Bonnet - a truly beautiful Irish fiddle song and one of my favourites of all time. How weird. I assumed my phone had somehow began playing this from Spotify so I picked it up and checked. Nope. Maybe Mikey had left his phone behind and it had spontaneously decided I needed to listen to some Irish music. Wasn't that either. The music continued. The mesmerising notes of the fiddle drifted on the wind, casting a spell over me. And then, as subtly as it started, it stopped.

Was I hallucinating? Had I been bitten by an Australian spider with a passion for Irish trad music, the impact of their venom being to throw their victim into hallucinations of fiddle music before they die? I could think of worse ways to go…

But no, it was no spider bite. I decided to investigate the source of this fiddle music - both out of interest and to make sure four weeks living out of a car hadn’t resulted in temporary insanity. I started walking into the woods in the direction from where I had heard it. I followed a lightly worn track through the trees and soon came to a clearing. Sitting cross-legged underneath a large tarp pulled between two trees was a tall, slender man with long curly brown hair falling to his shoulders. His bare feet poked out of jeans that were three sizes too big on his waist but tied in by a belt. And on his lap, rested a fiddle.

"Was that you playing The Sailor's Bonnet?" I asked, not sure whether finding this man had proven my sanity, or if the hallucinations had now added characters to the sounds.

"Yeah. It was.” He said quietly, a soft, small smile spreading across his face.

"Ehhhh, how do you know that song? It's one of my favourite of all time but when I heard it I coming through the trees I thought I was going crazy."

I then started to notice the other people sitting underneath the tarp. There was a girl with short brown hair and crazy eyes. And she was holding a banjo. A guy who looked like the love child of Julius Caeasr and Jay Shetty held a guitar. A mandolin lay beside a beautiful blonde woman with deep blue eyes that looked into your soul. Who the hell are these people and what the hell is this place?

After some conversation I learned that I had discovered a group of Irish trad loving, Australian hippies, living in the woods in deep southern Victoria. They each had their own story for how they had discovered trad and folk music and were deeply passionate about it. They knew everything, never setting a foot wrong in our dance of musical and cultural exploration. They asked if I played and then told me to go get my tin whistle. I obliged and when I returned we jammed together. A full trad session, in the middle of the woods, on Parker Hill, Victoria.

The next day I left these beautiful hippies, my mind packed with songs to learn, bands to listen to and folk festivals to attend.

By the way, this actually fucking happened.

That’s all for now. If you enjoyed it, drop your email below and I’ll email you each new issue.

See ya next week,

Steve

Notable mentions:

• HAH: Coffee shop right on the beach in Lorne. Good coffee, great setting and the jaflles (toasted sanwiches) are fab. The staff are kooky and lovely.

• Parker Hill Campground: a remote campground in Cape Otway and home to an Irish trad commune, apparently. Hike down the steps for a swim in the bay.

• Aire River: drive to the bottom near the campgrounds for some good fishing and a nice little bit of four wheel driving.

• Wye River Campground: when God goes camping, this is where they send him. Streams, campfires and wildlife with the benefit of top notch facilities (hello warm showers!)

• Lorne Aquatic and Angling Club: the only thing better than the smell of cigarrettes and beer soaked carpet, was the fact that it was teh cheapest beer I've had in Aus. We either accidentally crashed a weird wedding or this is spot is loose as fuck.

• Apollo Bay Fisherman's Co-op; I'm not a fish and chips guy but this place converted me. Get the seafood platter.

• Milko Coffee Roasters: Best spot for coffee in Anglesea and probably the entire Great Ocean Road

• ICARO: good coffee in Apollo Bay and a nice spot to do a bit of work from. Tasty breaky burrito and nice vibe

• In The Skies Art and Music; Craft shop meets pizza joint meets tiny bar in Lorne. A record player makes jazzy tunes and sitting out the front with a beer and pizza is a great way to spend an afternoon.

• The Gray Family: a beautiful Aussie family we met on the road. They were the perfect campsite neighbours and have a hilarious, cute-as-a-button kid.

Trip Stats:

Days on the road: 30

Distance covered: 2,905km

Time spent driving: 64 hours

Camps: 16

Snakes encountered: 1