Camping Solo in the time of COVID

The results are in. For nearly a year, campers, 4WD and caravans have been fetching hyper-inflated prices while those under or emerging from lockdown plan their next escape. No longer shackled to their desks, some have even made a lifestyle of working on the road. For the adventurous globetrotter attention is being turned inward to the innards of Australia. Trips to Bali have become roadtrips to Broken Hill. This has unleashed a bunch of new campers with their mint condition camping gear onto the country’s interior.

For me, I have just taken a two and a half week hiatus from work and writing - a trip in my 4WD to the Australian hinterlands of South Australia. The original plan was to take a few weeks to drive to Alice Springs and meet up with friends and slowly return to Adelaide via the Flinders ranges and Oodnadatta track with them.

After limited planning I headed off. Within a few days it became clear that with Sydney COVID cases (especially in the community) rising, the likelihood of my friend being able to travel into other states, especially the highly COVID cautious South Australia was dwindling. The chance that I would become marooned in a state disconnected from my home Victoria further limited my plans. This confronted me with the prospect of five weeks camping and on the road totally alone.

It soon became apparent that camping solo was not the ‘restorative’ commune with nature that I had imagined it to be. A lot of it pretty hard work and preparation. I realised that I had a lot of romanticisms about camping in particular camping solo that I had to overturn before I could truly enjoy myself and appreciate the stunning beauty.

Here is what I distilled:

The Camping Bit #

Quick note: I have travelled solo a LOT and have loved it - even prefer it to travelling with someone. You call the shots and there is always someone propping up a bar somewhere that you can strike up a conversation with. Camping solo is a different prospect altogether. The solitude came as a bit of a shock as I had assumed that like travelling I could rely upon chance encounters. It sounds obvious but the ability to do this in the wilderness is severely restrained. Especially being a grown man in a tent, looking a bit grubby after a few days of not showering. In such conditions, to approach a family’s campsite for a friendly fireside chat will have them wondering where they left their axe. The important thing to remember is solo camping really means you’re alone for the majority of the time. You need to make sure you’re ok with this and factor it in to how long you are willing to camp for.

I also discovered that context plays a large part to loneliness. I was away during school holidays - meaning I was alone but surrounded by families. Families tend to be self contained, loud and frenetic. This made me feel pretty lonely sitting alone and drinking my 20th cup of tea. In other times - when wild camping (see below) I was alone but loneliness didn’t seem to be as much of a problem.

Seasons Mean Different Things in Australia #

It is winter in the Southern hemisphere and bloody cold across much of Australia. The thing is that these are the best months to visit Northern Territory which in summer has the Big Wet rendering much of it inaccessible.

I had just finished a very intense period of work and felt I needed to go slow to Adelaide. This turned out not to be a good move. I can remember pulling up at the Otways on the Great Ocean Road at a National Park where I could not have a campfire. Despite it being a sunny winter day the camp was a muddy hillside that must have been nice and cool in summer but now in the middle of winter felt desolate. I set up my tent and made dinner. I chain drank cups of tea to stay warm - and as an excuse to use the gas stove. I ended up going to bed at around 8 just for someplace warm to stay then - despite a whole bunch of layers woke up again and again - shivering, cold and miserable.

By the time I got to Port Augusta the weather was fine. It was around 20 and camping in these conditions worked well for me. If I had taken the time to let these very obvious facts sink in I would have taken an extra day at home to rest up then high tailed it to Adelaide - then Port Augusta.

Cooking #

Cooking is the major activity you can do (besides drinking - tea or booze) around the campfire solo. I always try to minimise on prep - get pre-chopped salads, get whatever burger paddy you want to be cooking ready. The last thing you want to be doing is chopping up in the dark while cold and hungry.

BONUS: Exactly what gets left out in hard rubbish collection seems to be seasonal. One year it’s dog houses the next year it’s ab-doers. The last year it has been BBQs. One hint - when you see an old bbq ready to meet its final destination - try opening it up and seeing if there is a hotplate. These are very easy to clean, heat and reseason with oil. You can then bring one camping with you and you’re cooking on an open fire. Cooking on an open fire is much more of an embrace of the great outdoors than trying to recreate your home stove top (with a portable gas stove).

Camp Setup #

My dream was to have a minimalist approach to camping. One chair, a table, a small hiking tent, bed matt and sleeping bag. When I originally bought my Toyota Prado (known as the White Whale) I wondered why anyone would need a trailer or roofracks given the tonnes of room in the back. But a camping trip through remote(ish) central Australia challenges a ‘minimalist’ approach. I packed out the back, the back seats and even the passenger seat.

Truth is camping solo actually requires most of a base campsite for a full family. Much of the kit is pooled - and people only have their own sleeping bag, mat and chair.

My ‘minimalist’ outfit got out of control because of:

• 4WDing: Going through the Australian desert in a 4WD requires a tonne of stuff. You need recovery gear, tools & compressor at the very least. The 4WD community is pretty macho and therefore obsessed with having exactly the right kit (imagine a community full of Al from Home Improvements and you get the picture). If you’re new it’s easy to get convinced you need a whole bunch of stuff that some loudmouth on the forums felt the need to justify post-facto. More on that below.
• Length of time: Unless you want to eat out of cans and packets the whole time and miss out on the opportunity to cook well you’ll need some way of keeping things cold. The longer you’re out the more you will need to bring as well. I had a whole plastic tub - the ‘pantry’ of non-perishables but also brought a fancy (but very bulky) Esky so I could bring meats and dairy.
• Remoteness: Heading to remote locations solo will sometimes even mean you need to bring extra stuff. lI had quite an extensive first aid kit and had hired an EPIRB both pretty necessary but bulky items.

Safe Distances and Fatigue Levels #

I discovered that camping is mostly work. Preparing food, setting up your tent, cleaning dishes can all take more time and energy than it would at home. Doing all this solo means you’re doing all the work. This can be tiring.

Sleeping in a tent often means waking up throughout the night - whether from the cold or the noises like wind means you’re not likely to wake up as well rested as you would at home. Ear plugs, if you can handle them, and a hot water bottle help a lot for some solid kip.

What’s more you need to use your gear to sleep in which means there is no possibility of packing your vehicle the night before you set off. In the early morning your tent is wet so expect a bit of a later start.

Solo roadtrips means that you have nobody to share the driving with. When you could be driving 900 kilometres after a night of bed rest it is positively dangerous to expect the same distances after a night in the tent.

Some added hurdles here - roos are everywhere at dusk and I steered away from driving at night because of the potential animals on the road. Plus driving late means you’re setting up your next campsite in the dark.

All this points to driving much shorter distances than normal as a safety factor. Also a hint: constantly drink water so you have to pee every hour or so. This means you stay awake and you’re taking regular breaks.

Wild Camping #

Wild Camping is camping at an unofficial campsite - usually someone’s property which is so big they don’t even know anyone is there (or ideally they are cool with people camping on it). I have had this on my todo list for as long as I had a todo list. Again I had been drawn to the romance. It was raw camping where you would pick the spot, fetch the wood and remain undetected. How exquisite and how much closer to a bona fide wilderness than the State Park’s campsites with their pit dunnies and graded campsites.

The downside was obvious and what I would venture that anyone who grew up in a city would think - the chances of waking up in the middle of the night from a gruff booting or orders to pack the fuck up and get the fuck out seemed likely and predestined. You were essentially living the life of a hobo which was liable to end you in some scary situations when solo.

I downloaded the app WikiCamps and was able to find an area off the main highway that was an unofficial campsite. When I pulled into it there were a few caravans pulled up. But when I followed the track over a hill it felt as if I was the last person alive. I intended to only spend one night but ended up there for another day. It was like being in the open desert. THIS was what I had been hungering for. It was rejuvenating in a way that I could never have expected it to be.

I will definitely do this again.

Pacing #

I’m not sure how to do this right but I am sure how to do it wrong. The tension is between keeping moving and settling down.

Keeping moving involves going slowly from Melbourne to Adelaide. It involves packing up your tent each night and moving to another campsite. The benefits of keeping moving is that you cover ground and you can pick up fresh supplies (even grab a shower) when you go through towns. The negatives of keeping moving is that it is kind of a drag to pack up your tent, sleeping bag, mattress each morning and setting it up each night, when you’ve been driving all day. Over time it feels like your day is an endless procession of chores.

Settling into a place is nice but like all the items in your esky it has an expiry date. If you’re in a place without showers you’re getting pongier each day and you will end up at a time when all your unspoiled food is in tins. Your water or LPG tanks might be running low. I also never figured out if it was safe to leave my campsite set up unattended and head into town to get fresh supplies. I went on a hike and left my campsite unattended. While I was away there was a dust storm and I returned to see all my things strewn around - I had protected them from the rain but had not thought about dust storms.

I believe there is a balance to be struck here - moving each day sux but being solo and highly mobile is an asset.

4WDing #

There is space for an entire article dedicated to 4WDing. At least. Truth is that it is possible to do the vast majority of Australia without a 4WD. It’s also important (and nobody told me this) to distinguish 4WDing from the multitude of gravel tracks that exist throughout Australia that are easily manageable in the right seasons - refer to Seasons Mean….

As I stated before 4WDers are highly susceptible to hype. It must be something about appearing as ruggedness or more prepared than the next guy to make kitting out one’s vehicle so as to be bristling with max trax, snorkels, mud terrain tires, a jack and collapsible shovel. All in mint condition having never strayed from the snaking traffic jams between home, the Vaucluse/Torak construction site and the pub. About as rugged as a Swiss army knife left in one’s undie drawer.

When staring at the great cartographic void that is the centre of Australia - with its huge distances between tiny places - it is easy to get sucked in to this hype. Especially when travelling solo. And it all serves a purpose - which makes imagining running into that exact situation easy.

I spent thousands of dollars on recovery and survival gear (which is actually not that much): water tanks, snatch straps and even an electronic EPIRB. When the reality of the famous Oodnadatta track greeted me and I felt anxiety about only taking one spare tire then looking up as a Juicy Camper bounced past - no 4WD - god knows if they even had a spare tire. As for the track: there is even pub in the middle of it.

Admittedly the Oodnadatta track is famously one of the easiest 4WD tracks in the country and a dry winter the most forgiving conditions. My point is NOT that all 4WD gear is necessary for all conditions. Trawling through forums which are full of bluster and the feeling exposed as a first-time 4WDer travelling solo it is easy to convince yourself you need ALL gear for all roads but you do not. If you are planning your trip in advance you can get a specific set of gear for specific tracks you will take.

Well that’s about it from advice from me a self-loathing city-slicker that tried to embrace the country of his birth.