Some Outback crime risks you can avoid

We’ve agonised for several years over the need to run this story, because we’ve got to know and love many First Nations people over our 50 years of bush travel, but we think it’s time to advise Outback-travelling ‘newbies’ how to avoid robbery or worse.

Back when Outback adventures were attempted by only a relatively brave and self-sufficient few, remote areas were lightly visited. Now, there’s a much larger travelling population, made to feel secure by more reliable and better equipped vehicles, wider availability of fuel and the support of GPS mapping, mobile and satellite phones. 

Sadly, well-equipped vehicles and relatively well-heeled travellers can be targets for the criminally inclined and many of these offenders in the Outback are First Nations youths, as the following statistics illustrate. 

Just like any other group, the vast majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people don’t get in trouble with the law. However, despite making up only two-percent of the general population, they make up 26-percent of the prison population and are 10 times more likely to be locked up than other Australians.

This shameful reality is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who are 26 times more likely than their peers to be incarcerated.

Why is it so, despite enormous amounts of money directed at this problem, by successive Federal, State and Territory Governments?

Better brains than ours have long despaired at fixing this situation, so at OTA we’re not pretending to have the solutions, but our travel experiences and news analysis suggests some areas that might be tackled. 

For example, First Nations kids are brought up largely by disillusioned parents and relatives, and are fed a diet of messages that reinforce the concept that white people stole their birthright.

That’s obviously true: the British invaded Australasia and took over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. The Brit settlers won and First Nations people lost, so they’re chasing redress. OTA has absolute sympathy with this pursuit, just as we can understand the feelings of loss incurred by indigenous people all around the world: in North, Central and South America, in Africa, in Scandinavia, in Japan, in the Middle East and all across Asia.

But it’s simply impossible to reverse history, so we all need to manage what we’ve got. Dealing with historic ‘white fella theft’ by robbing and bashing Outback tourists, or destroying their vehicles isn’t going to help anyone’s cause, is it?

At Palm Valley a few years ago, we stopped to help a tourist bus driver change a flat tyre and were told by the mainly American customers on board that their first-floor hotel rooms in a supposedly secure Alice Springs resort had been burgled while they were out at dinner the night before.

Money, valuables and passports were stolen and these folks had completely changed their attitude to Aboriginal people. The Yanks weren’t making any plans to return to Australia.

The crazy thing is that violent youth crime is also perpetrated in Aboriginal communities against other indigenous people. We can remember seeing patrolling utes with cages on the back cruising the streets of Yuendumu at night, staffed by elders, picking up young troublemakers to lock them up overnight.

Yuendumu elders strove to keep their developing youth in the community and told us: “Once they move to Alice Springs, we’ve lost ‘em”.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Senator for the Northern Territory, was one of the few Aboriginal leaders to oppose the Voice Referendum, in 2023 and explained why:

”The answer is simple, it’s the Voice of division and I don’t want our country to be divided along the lines of race.”

Jacinta Price also stated there are: “no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation” for indigenous Australians and she is not the only Indigenous Australian holding this view.

In Australia, we like to think of ourselves as giving everyone a fair go. We’re told no matter who we are, or where we come from, if we work hard we can achieve anything. Sadly, the reality is that not everyone gets the same chance to thrive.

Even when some First Nations kids grow up with excellent parenting and graduate from TAFE or university, the ‘pull’ of their home communities is strong, but job opportunities that use those skills in remote communities are scarce. We met one uni graduate in Ngukurr, in Arnhem Land, who couldn’t pursue her chosen profession in the town and was working as a check-out chick in the local store.

Avoiding crime

So, until these issues are sorted out – and we can’t see that happening in our lifetimes – bush travellers need to deal with the reality that they could be targets for robbery and violence. The danger is not only from Indigenous youth, because there’s some dodgy white trash out there as well!

Here’s how we endeavour to keep safe when we’re Outback.

We keep away from populated areas as much as possible, but some localities need to be visited, for interest’s sake or for supplies. We’re very careful about where we park our camper and we always lock every door and compartment. 

It shouldn’t need to be said, but leaving anything of value, visible inside a locked vehicle, is just asking for a break-in. A back-seat fridge is a likely target, because fridges usually hold some grog.

Also, some places deserve special treatment. Our shopping procedure in Alice Springs, for example, is to park in the main shopping centre car park and one of us – usually me – remains in the vehicle and catches up with emails and phone messages, while keeping an eye on the surroundings. 

When she-who-must-be-obeyed has finished shopping, she wheels the trolley to the camper and we pack everything away. If there’s anything ‘blokey’ I need to buy, she minds the vehicle while I go to do that errand. Then we get out of there.

We never park in an Outback town at night, unless we’re in a caravan park on the edge of town that has some form of security. If we want to visit the town we either walk from the caravan park, or get a taxi, leaving our camper secure in the park. If we don’t need to overnight-camp in that town, we visit it during the day and then bush-camp several kilometres away from the town at night.

We never camp in a main road rest area if it’s on the edge of a town. You think you’d be safe in one such area on the southern outskirts of the large NSW town of Taree, but you’d be wrong. There have been several bashings and robberies of truckies and campers in that rest area.

When we’re bush camping, we make sure that we’re well off the beaten track and our campfire glow can’t be seen from the road.

Of course, there are crime sources other than Indigenous youth offenders. There’s also risk from ill-intentioned campers.

There used to be an unwritten law that other people’s camping gear was sacred. It was considered safe to leave your table, chairs and even your gas cooker at your campsite when you went for a walk or were fishing. Nowadays, that’s not such a good idea. We have easy-fold cooker, table and chairs that are quick to erect and pack away when we leave the campsite for an excursion.

Unfortunately, assaults – or worse – are on the increase, following campsite disputes. Such disputes are usually caused by complaints about noise in one form or another. We try to avoid such situations by camping as remotely as possible, but when we do have to share popular sites we arrive at dusk on Sunday, when the weekend hordes are packing up to be home in time for work on Monday morning and we pack up camp on Friday afternoon, before they arrive once more.

If we do encounter unwelcome noise from unsavoury campers we simply pack up and go somewhere else. That’s where having a camper set up that allows rapid pack-away comes in handy.

It’s tempting to have some form of self-defence weaponry on hand when you’re camped, but that can easily become a two-edged sword – apart from the fact that it’s illegal. It’s much better to avoid likely crime situations than plan to fight your way out of them!