Jogging Alone

The sad and sickening news of another Melbournian woman being raped and murdered while walking home alone at night was an all too common reminder yet again of why my senses are on high alert whenever I’m alone on the streets when no one else is around. 

It doesn’t have to be a bushy parkland in the dark of night either. It seems when women are concerned, we are vulnerable whenever we are seen to be alone, be it the middle of the day or the under the cloak of darkness. 

The horrific rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon in a park in the inner suburbs of Melbourne struck a cord with me not just because it was in my hometown of Melbourne, and in a park that I knew my sister jogged around, but because when I was just the same age as Eurydice I narrowly escaped being abducted by an attacker, also in the inner suburbs of Melbourne.

One summer, while on break from university in Ballarat, I was at my family home in Northcote and my morning exercise routine was to jog the mile down to the Collingwood Leisure Centre, swim some laps, then walk back up Rucker’s Hill to home. 

The pool was located on the edge of a small park only hundreds of metres from busy Hoddle Street, Heidelberg Road, Clifton Hill railway station and Queens Parade.  Unfortunately for me though, the most direct route home saw me walking through a pedestrian tunnel that was approximately 40m long and ran under the Heidelberg Rd overpass. I always felt uneasy walking through the tunnel but not enough that I ever thought to go the long way around, which would have added a few hundred metres on to my trip.

On this particular day, as I walked across the slip lane exit road from Hoddle Street and entered the pedestrian tunnel, I noticed a van slow down and pull up on the road behind me at the entrance to the tunnel. I remember thinking how strange it was because being an off-ramp there was no reason to stop there. It was more of a subconscious thought than a conscious one but it was enough to set a warning light off in my brain and within seconds I realised I was in a seriously dangerous situation. Instinctively a surge of adrenaline pulsed through my body as the “fight or flight” reflex kicked in and I was sprinting before I was even consciously aware of it. As I launched myself forward I glanced over my right shoulder and sure enough there was a man chasing after me, screaming “come here you f******* c***”. My takeoff was so forceful I later had a sore thigh muscle from the effects of it performing at a higher level and more sudden activation than it was ever used to. To this day I’m grateful for that prehistoric vestige of an animal brain, the amygdala, still existing deep in the medial temporal lobe of our brain. It kicked into action long before I even had a chance to consciously evaluate the situation.

I don’t remember having any sense of fear, just an overwhelming sense of urgency to get out of the tunnel and onto busy Queens Parade. Unfortunately I not only had to get to the end of the tunnel but also navigate through about 60m of unoccupied laneway to get to the main road. I didn’t stop sprinting until I got there and I was lucky to obviously be fitter than the assailant because he never caught up to me. 

When I got to the relative safe location of the main road and sensed that I had shaken the would-be abductor, I stopped to catch my breath. My heart was absolutely racing and adrenaline was still surging through my veins. My immediate thought was one of anger. I was so bloody angry at what I had just experienced. I was also angry that, while seeing that the vehicle was a white Mazda van with a red stripe along the side, I only viewed it from the side so was unable to see the registration plates. Without knowing the license plate number I knew there was no hope of the police being able to track it down. The bastard was going to get away with it and probably try again with some other defenseless woman when the opportunity presented itself again.

This all unfolded in broad daylight on a weekday in Melbourne, within only hundreds of metres of busy main roads. The opportunistic assailant can’t have been new to this game or he wouldn’t have been able to react so quickly and pull over in front of the tunnel as he saw me enter it. This person obviously kept his eyes open for opportunities exactly like this. Since then I have often wondered who he was, had he already abducted women in that van before attempting it with me, has he successfully done it since then? 

It’s frustrating to know that as a woman it’s not safe to walk the streets alone, not only at night but also in the middle of the day. I know that until you have been personally faced with this situation you don’t understand strongly enough the need to take precautions when walking or jogging alone. There is a psychology term called the “normalcy bias” which is a belief that people hold when facing a life-threatening situation. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood and possible effects because people believe that things will always function the way things have normally functioned. This can result in people failing to adequately prepare themselves for a possible threat to their life. 

I can honestly say I no longer suffer from normalcy bias and always avoid being alone in places where I know I can be vulnerable. Sometimes it’s not possible but in these circumstances my senses are hyper alert to possible threats. My adrenaline is already pumping in anticipation of having to make a hasty getaway.

This event happened more than 35 years ago but it still makes me angry to this day when I think about it. Why the heck shouldn’t we be able to walk the streets alone just because we are women? Why do men get free run of the streets and we don’t? 

Upon hearing about the murder of Eurydice Dixon in Melbourne, I sent my sister a message to check if the victim was anyone she knew, as the original news bulletin stated she was attacked while jogging in the park. Fortunately she was not known to her but after a few messages back and forth about how terrible it was and how careful we have to be while jogging, she responded with: “I’m always really conscious of taking well lit roads. It's so frustrating that boys don’t have to give it a second thought. I’ve lost track of the amount of times [my husband] has questioned why I’ve taken harder routes early in the morning. He gets to just run wherever he wants.”

While we should be able to walk the streets without fear of being accosted, the reality always has been and will continue to be a different story. There was a backlash of comments from women who were disgusted with the police statement in the aftermath of the murder, stating that women have to be more careful and not walk alone at night. In a perfect world we shouldn’t have to worry about it but in reality this problem is never going to go away. 

All the anti-violence campaigns against women are not going to stop the perpetrators. Those campaigns only preach to the people who are already doing the right thing.  People who commit these crimes couldn’t care less about what the public cares about their actions. They are sick people and have no thought to the possible consequences if they get caught. How do you police against that?

If there’s one lesson we can learn from this horrible rape and murder of an innocent young woman is that all men need to be more aware of how dangerous it is for women to be alone on the streets and see to it that their female friends and loved ones aren’t placed in vulnerable situations if they have a chance to change it. Remember “normalcy bias”…if they say they are fine to walk home alone don’t believe them! Do what you can to make sure they are not left in a vulnerable position. This latest victim was only a few hundred metres from her home when her life was violently ended. Being close to home is no guarantee to you getting home safely.

We all have to watch out for each other. Making sensible choices about our personal safety is imperative. We shouldn’t have to continually be watching out for men who could do us harm…but the reality is, we do!  Stay safe everyone.