While everyone today knows how dangerous it is to get into a car with a complete stranger, hitchhiking was a perfectly normal way for people, especially backpackers, to get from one place to the next in Australia in the early 1990s.
In January 1990, a British backpacker named Paul Onions thought it was perfectly safe to hitchhike his way down the eastern coast of Australia. However, in the years that followed, Paul and the rest of Australia learned the hard way why you should never accept a ride from a stranger…