The road may be sealed, but it’s still remote bro.

Posted: June 28, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Camping | Tags: , , , , , | 13 Comments

Before there were roof tents and urban 4WDs with Lane Assist, backpacking Australia meant buying a Ford or Holden station wagon (are they even a thing anymore?), a single Primus burner, a frypan and a spatula/egg-flip, a 10L water bladder you stuck in the sun for showering, and perhaps a small tent if you didn’t sleep in your car. You drove to hot and red places and met the cast of Wolf Creek, people that strove to exist under the radar. You saw snakes on the road digesting whole kangaroos, and something ate through your plastic container of pancake mix. That’s the way my Kiwi cuzzies did it, and both of them ended up marrying the partners they travelled with. A better relationship tester I cannot think of. 

Fast forward to 2025. You’re a 23 year old French couple, incredibly lean, light framed (would make great cyclists), deeply tanned, effortlessly beautiful, your standard response to most things is a je-ne-sais-pas shrug, and you are living your Aussie outback dream. But growing up in the arrondissements has not equipped you for this. 

Your Range Rover is stuffed to the ceiling with everything from plastic beer tankards to a blue satin sleep mask, empty sunglasses cases, sundry plastic gadgets, empty two minute noodle containers and a hair bandana. And that’s just the front dash. You’ve populated two more car parks with your boogie board, plastic bins, ancient kite surfboard, water container and a Birkenstock. You’ve lost the ladder to your rooftop tent and the cover, so it appears to have collapsed in a heap on your roof and resembles a taco. 

Yesterday you lost your only car key. Another key can only be made in the UK factory based on the engine VIN number and will take eight months. You spend two days on the beach waving a defective metal detector with a friend sifting the sand by hand in search of the car key where it probably, maybe, got dropped. Unsure. 

So. Much. Sand. Such a small key.

Passing strangers show up and sift alongside you with no success. Your partner has to hitch a lift 20km to a spot with enough coverage to call the tow truck guy, then sit there for a call back to say that he was on his way, then get another 20km lift back to meet him. The towie had already been there the day before to break into your car, but only the driver’s door was able to be opened and you couldn’t get to all the stuff jammed in the back, including your food. 

Waz and I joined the roll call of those determined to find the elusive key to your kingdom, but after reducing our nails to stubs and 10sqm of displaced sand later, we regrettably returned to our car, just as the towie arrived. Waz was dispatched to retrieve the treasure hunters from the dunes, and by the time they breathlessly returned, the towie had already backed up and told me a joke. 

Towie: “Know why Range Rovers have heated back windows? 
Me: “They do?”
Towie: “Yep. Keeps your hands warm while you’re pushing them. Hahaha”.

We chatted about how many calls he gets and Vehicles Most Likely to Fail, as you do, and then he predicted, “This car will end up at the wreckers. Had the same thing not long ago. Guy couldn’t get a key, had to trash his car.“

I see this scenario so often, I’ve invented a collective noun for it: A Debacle of Backpackers. 

After 200000km around Oz, Waz and I are not eternally surprised when stuff happens. Like this. It was a boiling hot day. Waz had developed a very high temperature and because it wasn’t abating, spent a couple of days in Exmouth Hospital, while causes were unravelled. I was back at camp 80km away, without coverage and a free diary so thought I’d pop down the road for a snorkel at Oyster Stacks. I jumped in the car in bikini and towel, threw gear in the back and roared off. Three kilometres down the road the steering was off, so I stuck my head out of the window to hear a suboptimal sound and pulled over.

The rear drivers side tyre had disintegrated, frilling out decoratively around the rim. I had expected to avoid tyre changes for longer in a six week old vehicle. 

First lesson: Tyres on new cars are special cheapo issue, with only half the tread of the type of tyre you’d actually want.

No worries, I’ll get the spare out, bingo, bango, bongo. With Waz away, I had taken the opportunity to empty the trailer of everything I deemed unnecessary without managerial oversight and into the car, a temporary Bin of Abandonment, not dissimilar to aforementioned backpacker vehicles. After 20 minutes, I had unearthed the jack, moved every random item out including the 80L Engel (fridge) but failed to locate the tyre toolkit. Sitting in the back feeling underdressed, with the door up and hazards on, reading a manual I never intended to, the March flies start biting.

As mentioned before, Waz had engaged a crowd in Adelaide to remove the third row of seats, and fit out the back with an extra battery, platform etc. Apparently, the tyre tools went the way of the third row. No worries, I’ll borrow someone else’s. The sparse passing vehicle traffic was driven by a mixture of no idea/infirm/hire vehicle/not getting involved, so I set off in my jandals, bikini and rashie to walk back to camp and hopefully borrow a tyre kit.

I found a guy in a Prado with three small overheated kids on a promise to go to Sandy Bay, who kindly loaned me his tools. I found a campers Starlink dish and may have aggressively texted Waz in ALL CAPS. The camp host drove me back to the car to give me a hand. 

Lesson Two: Just because it’s a Prado, doesn’t mean the tyre kit is the same.

The spare is located under the vehicle with access via a flimsy plastic, very small, unnecessary channel, requiring a certain size tool. After a lot of heat, dust, flies and cries from me of, “Just break the bloody thing, I no longer care”, the tyre was liberated. But despite the collective efforts of the host (“It’s not safe to drive up onto the hard seal”), my new Swedish buddy, who had spent half a day combing sand for the French couple and would not leave until I was sorted, and his German friend (“No good. It is time for gin!”), the jack kept sinking in the sand.   

Five hours had passed. Dusk was descending. All I needed was the kind of person towing a fishing boat who would have all the tools, break the rules. 

“Gidday. How ya goin’?”. Two guys hauling a Jetski, driving home from surfing the reef, simply nod at my expression and calmly pull over. Ten minutes later, done. The sun sank, and everyone could go home. 

Lesson Three: People are awesome. 

Sunset over the Range