Back in England, camping meant a two-man tent in a field in Devon, a cool box of lagers, and a playlist on a Bluetooth speaker. It was pleasant enough. But it was never quiet. Not really. There was always a road nearby, or a neighbouring pitch with kids running about, or the distant hum of a motorway you could not quite place but always heard.
The outback is different. The outback is properly, unsettlingly quiet. The kind of quiet that makes your ears ring for the first hour until your brain stops searching for noise and finally lets go.
The Setup
I drove four hours west of Brisbane with a mate who had done this before. He lent me a swag — a canvas roll-up bed that sits directly on the ground, no tent poles, no rain fly, just you and the sky. We found a spot off a dirt track near Crows Nest National Park, well past the point where the phone signal dropped out. I laid the swag on flat ground, unrolled my sleeping bag inside, and that was home for three nights.
The gear list was minimal: swag, sleeping bag, head torch, two litres of water per day, a camp stove, a pot, rice, tinned beans, coffee, and a first aid kit. No chair. No table. No cooler. If you could not carry it in two trips from the car, it did not come.
The First Night
I will not pretend I slept well. Every sound was amplified — the crack of a branch, the distant call of something I could not identify, the rustle of what I desperately hoped was not a snake. I lay in the swag staring at the Milky Way, which was so bright and dense it looked artificial. You do not get skies like that in Bournemouth.
By the second night, something shifted. The sounds became background. The silence became comfortable. I cooked rice and beans over the stove, drank instant coffee from a tin mug, and sat watching the sun set behind a ridgeline that stretched so far it curved with the earth. No podcast. No music. Just the fire and the sky and the kind of boredom that eventually turns into peace.
What I Took Away
Three nights does not sound like much. But three nights without a phone, without a schedule, without a single notification or obligation, is more reset than most people get in a year. I came back to Brisbane feeling lighter in a way I had not expected. Not enlightened — I am not going to pretend this was some spiritual awakening. Just lighter. Clearer. Like someone had turned the volume down on everything that does not matter.
You do not need to go far to disconnect. You just need to go far enough that coming back is not easy.
The outback does not care about your routine, your goals, or your to-do list. It is indifferent. And that indifference is exactly what makes it useful.
