As the number of grey nomads with a thirst for adventure grows, so too does the number of ‘stranded’ or ‘lost’ travellers who need rescuing.
Last year, police in WA alone had to conduct around 230 searches for people, with about a third of those in regional areas. At least three of the people reported missing were found dead.
Search aircraft cost up to $5,000 an hour to hire, meaning the bill for a single search can climb close to $1 million.
Police told the ABC that the most common scenarios involved vehicles becoming bogged or broken down; prospectors getting lost, or people with dementia or mental illness who became disoriented. They say that travelling with safety equipment like an EPIRB is the key to staying alive in the bush.
“For a couple of hundred dollars, you can have a piece of equipment on your vehicle, or on your person, that will work anywhere,” Assistant Police Commissioner, Murray Smalpage, told the ABC. “And if you push that button someone is coming looking. That time frame may be the difference between finding you alive or finding your remains.”
However, one of Australia’s leading outback survival experts says people are in danger of becoming too reliant on high-tech gadgets, and he would like to see a ‘back to basics’ approach to bushcraft.
“People are losing their bush-craft skills and their common sense skills,” Bob Cooper – who has been teaching bush survival skills for more than 30 years – told the ABC. “They can go out with their GPS and go to a remote location and find them easily … but when the thing stops working, people don’t know what to do, and they’re out of range with their mobile phone.”
He wants people to better understand the country in which they travel.
“They feel like it’s ‘us versus nature’,” he said. “But if we can teach people to respect the environment, learn how to survive within it, then we’ll have more respect for the bush and respect for ourselves.”
The WA Department of Mines and Petroleum, Worksafe and WA Police are currently running campaigns trying to reinforce the key messages: carry water, carry an EPIRB, and stay with your vehicle if something goes wrong.
