Excess and Waste

Four wheel driving, never did I anticipate it to be so much fun, and so very enabling. Having undertaken most of my travels through the bush on my own two feet over the last few years, I actually had a bad perception of 4WDing. I had come to associate 4WD’s with excess and waste. Whilst their benefits to the bush traveller are obvious, this prior experience I had really shaped how I saw the pursuit and the culture that goes with it.

More times than I can count I have come across otherwise pristine areas laden with rubbish. Always on the side of a 4WD track. Only carrying a pack, and often having several days ahead of me before reaching a town, it became frustrating and disheartening to keep seeing so much litter, and to not be able to do much about it. Sure, you can (and should) pick up the small things to dispose of in town, but the bulky and heavy items, well ya know – it just aint feasible.

I now own a 4WD myself. I’ve come to really appreciate this rig and my love of 4WDing is firmly set in stone. Whilst cleaning up after endless dirt bags (the bad kind) is not how I’d prefer to spend my time outside, it is an unfortunate necessity. Case in point – on my first day trip 4WDing me and a good friend ended up cleaning up two bin bags full (160L) of all kinds of rubbish. There was just so much litter and no way we could collect it all without a trailer plus a few return trips. We probably did less than 20km of tracks all up. Since that first outing and over the course of the last 6 months I’ve been 4WDing on countless occasions and cleaning up after people has become a common thread. The society we live in fosters this kind of wasteful and uncaring attitude. Regardless, for me, such things are more of a call to action than they are a hopeless cause.

It comes down to education and awareness. Leave No Trace principles and environmental stewardship are subjects that need to be facilitated if future generations are going to enjoy what little there is left of the living world.