Drama as drunk man hitches ride under truck

By the time he climbed out about five hours later, the 43-year-old was disoriented, dishevelled, and stranded roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) from his intended stop.

A Queensland police officer summed up the man's predicament in footage released to media after finding him on the side of the road late last week.

"You had a big session, you've lost all control, and you've ended up here somehow trying to work your way back?" he asked.

"Pretty much," the stowaway, clad in a soiled blue shirt, replied.

Police said the "intoxicated" man climbed onto metal racks underneath the B-Double freight truck -- which can weigh upwards of 50 tonnes -- when it stopped in the idyllic seaside town of Nambucca Heads in the state of New South Wales.

The hapless hitchhiker planned to clamber out when the truck stopped at a red light about 40 minutes away in Coffs Harbour, police added.

But the plan went awry when the truck sailed through a string of green lights, finally stopping to refuel five hours north in Queensland.

"I'm really stressed out. I had a bit to drink," the man told police.

"I jumped in the undercarriage thinking he was going to stop in Coffs Harbour, and he got a green light the whole way through and never stopped until here."

The bemused police officer suggested it must have been a bumpy and uncomfortable ride.

"I didn't have to worry about the air con, there was a pretty breeze through there," the man replied.

"It was just stupidity to be honest with you."

Queensland police said the man had been slapped with an Aus$288 (US$188)fine for riding in a "part of a motor vehicle not designed for passengers or goods".