Preface

About the research

This research was conducted in early 2020. From January till late March, I spend time with many people in the off-road scene, in and around Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. My own personal interests in the topic of off-roading drove me to choose it as the research subject for this master’s project. Additionally, the recent increase in popularity of off-roading, or other forms of long-distance vehicular travel, make it a relevant case study into the relationship between people, their surroundings, and the ever-increasing use of technology (Grant 2008, 1103). When drafting the fieldwork proposal, I imagined the field largely in terms of long distance, remote, vehicular travel. But during my research and interaction with research participants, I realized that more localized off-roading communities proved a more productive ethnographic insight into the practice of off-roading instead.

When I started establishing contact with potential interlocutors for my January-March research period. I was told from the beginning, by potential research interlocutors, that during this period it was bushfire season in Australia (which mostly affects the coasts), and that the outback was all but impenetrable due to severe summer heat. Although I did face some four-wheel drive access bans due to fire risk, relating to the severe 2020 wildfires in Australia, Brisbane was mostly spared during this bushfire season. Rather contradictory, it was mainly flooding and rain, originating from the very rains that ended the 2020’s fires, that impacted my personal experience in Australia the most.

Note the flooded road visible between the two rear wheels under the vehicle, in the picture below.

During my preparations I talked to many people who are engaged with the world of long-distance remote travel. Many of them were interested in my research, but none of them could offer me an opportunity to join them. Sometimes, because taking a researcher and camera gear simply wasn’t viable in the limited space of the vehicle, they lived in. Sometimes because they valued traveling alone. But most often, because people in Australia do not plan long distance trips during the height of summer, exactly because of the risk of bushfires, floods, and excessive temperatures, which make many places impassable.

After I arrived in Brisbane, in early January 2020, I posted a single message on r/Brisbane[1], explaining my (research) intentions and interests, which led to me getting in contact with Greg Milligan. During my first days in Australia, Greg would be the one to introduce me to the people who ended up showing me the world of off-roading in Australia. It turned out that the more localized off-roading communities are far more prevalent than the individuals engaged in long-distance remote travel. The off-roading community in Brisbane was also far more capable, or willing, to allow me access into their practice of off-roading. It is thus because of Greg that I would spend the next three months in Brisbane, d(r)iving deep into the world of off-roading.

During my research I found that this world of off-roading is very diverse, and it almost goes without saying that the people I met are not necessarily representative for off-roaders everywhere. Therefor the argot or jargon I encountered during my research, might not be understood similarly by all off-roaders, especially by those outside the Australian context. Yet I feel that a reader of this material, who might not have, or gain a full understanding off all the (technical) intricacies of off-roading and its jargon, is not necessarily limited in gaining an understanding of off-roading through this piece. Understanding every piece of jargon, and every technical detail, in my opinion, should not be the goal of anyone engaging with this material, or any ethnographic material for that matter.

As a (Dutch) researcher I was, and still am, an obvious outsider to the Australian off-roading context. Over the course of my research, I encountered many (technical) details and situation that I did not fully understand, and I believe this is not only inherent to ethnographic research, but also to (Australian) car culture in general. It was only after revisiting some of my (audio-visual) materials at a much later moment during my research, that I actually understood some of the things I did not understand, or notice, during earlier interactions. In fact, it was only after revisiting my audio-visual materials, with much greater understanding, which was gained over the course of the fieldwork, that I realised that I missed, and thus didn’t understand, parts of my interaction in the field. It is logical to conclude that I am probably still unaware of more than one interaction that I ‘missed’. As a reader/viewer of this material, and thus as an outsider, it is likely that you will not fully understand some nuances provided by this material, and in my opinion, that is okay. After all, in ethnographic research, it is impossible to gain a ‘full’ understanding as an outsider; and this is something everyone who engages with ethnographic material should not only realise, but also embrace, as part of the constructed reality of ethnographic knowledge.

[1] r/Brisbane is a subpage of the message board reddit.com, an online platform for people all over the world.

The basics of Australia as a place for offroading.

When talking about Australia (in an ethnographic context), specific location matters. With 7.5 million square kilometres of land, it’s 3/4th the size of the entire continental Europe. I found that the sub-tropical country around Brisbane, which this research engaged with, is vastly different from examples like the Victoria highlands, the tropics in the north, or the deserts around Perth; Australia is a diverse place when it comes to its landscapes. Even though Australia has a colossal 7.5 million square kilometres of this diverse land, it ‘only’ has a population of 25 million people, largely living on the coast. In comparison, this is about 1/30th of the population of Europe. This thus means that there are large uninhabited areas, often referred to as bush or ‘outback’ that cover Australia. It is these areas that gave rise to the popularity of off-roading, as a way to engage with the 'great outdoors' (Bishop 1995, 266), especially because they stand in such stark contrast with the inhabited suburban parts of Australia. That the outback has been a phenomenon in the 4-wheel-drive scene can be seen in the 1991 Toyota Landcruiser add below. The idea that the Landcruiser can navigate the Australian outback, sends such a strong message that Toyota is using it to market its 4wd to American customers.

Australia is also made up of different states. Each state has its own regulations for the modification of (off-road) vehicles, as well as the way they handle four-wheel drive access and permits. States also differ in their approaches to state parks, and other nature conservation projects. Some might allow dogs and vehicles under certain circumstances, while others might not. Some states might operate on the requirement of paid pre-booking for camping, while others might not have free public campgrounds. This research was largely conducted within the state of Queensland, and this thus is a key consideration when engaging with this research.

To engage with Australia as a place for off-roading, it is important to look into the factors that afford Australia to be a place for off-roading. Two important factors to this end are the availability of places to off-road, and the availability of vehicles to off-road with. Even though Australia knows vast amounts of bush and outback, these in themselves do not constitute as places to off-road. Off-roading still requires infrastructure, like fuel availability (not infrequently interlocutors and I had to leave 4-wheel-drive destinations to ‘run back into town’ to refuel the vehicle), or the presence of some form of road, path or track (Bishop 1996, 260). Some of this infrastructure can be attributed to the colonial heritage of farming and herding in the Australian interior. Many famous off-road tracks originated as herding stock routes, which provided ways to move cattle from the interior to colonial cities. In modern times, mining in Australia is what provides much of the infrastructure in the interior.

Mining exports accounted for 200 billion dollars in exports in 2016, and contributed to 6% of Australia’s GDP. Because of this scale, there is economic incentive to provide rudimentary services in areas that would not otherwise be accessible to off-roaders. It is also this mining business that drives the demand for off-road vehicles that are not sold in other markets, like the Landcruiser 70 series. Trade skill workers, better known as ‘tradies’ make up for a relatively large proportion of the Australian work force, at around 30%. These tradies also drive a large portion of the demand for off-road pick-up trucks, called ‘utes’. This relatively high demand, both from the mining industry, as well as tradies, affords for many companies offering aftermarket accessories and parts. Giving the Australian off-roading communities more options for vehicles and vehicle modification, compared to most other places in the world. This is a key reason (recreational) off-roading is so popular in Australia.

Driving to town

A short history of the Australian off-roading places

‘Overlanding’ is a term that is often used, around the world, to describe the practice of travel by land, usually in remote areas. This term is often (but not always) associated with vehicular travel, and is often indistinguishable from other off-roading terms like ‘touring’. ‘Overlanding’ certainly implies long term travel (spanning over multiple days or months), while ‘off-roading’ does not necessarily imply engagement over prolonged periods. The first use of the term ‘overlanding’ in the Australian context I could find was in 1868; Browne (1868, 1) states it is used to describe the movement of driving large amounts of cattle to the Australian colonial markets. Browne (1868) uses the term to describe not only the concept, or practice, but also the way of life of the people, and the people (herders and drivers) themselves, who were engaged in driving these cattle to the colonial trading cities (Browne, 1868, 5).

This colonial heritage still has impact of the practice of off-roading in Australia today. Many roads and tracks that are still used, recreationally by off-roaders or otherwise, were originally created as routes to move livestock and cattle by. The Canning Stock route and the Birdsville Track are examples of routes that have their origin in this history, and are still being hailed as must-see destinations for Australian off-roaders today. Many of these tracks exist today only for the challenge of driving them, as many parts of these tracks are not used for any other purpose. Later on, mining provided many tracks that are now all but abandoned, and similarly only still exist for recreational purposes.

Bishop (1996, 262) describes the idea of the ‘high-tech’ outback. The outback imagined by the colonial ideals of connecting and developing the outback (Bishop 1996, 262), into a ‘civilised’ place through the use of technology. The ‘high-tech’ outback stands in stark contrast with Bishop’s (1996, 261) idea of the ‘low-tech’ outback, an imaging of a “vast, pristine land, populated by rugged, mainly male, individuals struggling to survive” (ibid). It is this imagining of the ‘low-tech’ outback, as a rugged, impassable place, that appeals to the 4x4 owner (Bischop 1996, 262).

It is then perhaps ironic, that the ‘high-tech’ outback, imagined by the colonial ideals of connecting and developing the outback (Bishop 1996, 262), paved the way for the ‘low-tech’ outback; which is symbolized by the rugged nature of the landscape, and the idea of ‘struggling’ to survive in the hostile wilderness (Bishop 1996, 262). Without the colonial ideals of ‘transforming’ the outback from the pre-colonial state, to a ‘high-tech’, connected, and mostly ‘settled’ outback, many of the roads and tracks that afford off-roading, wouldn’t exist. The colonial history of the outback is rooted in aboriginal claims for land and self-determination (Bishop 1996, 268), and is still relevant today (Blair & James 2016, 76), especially considering that the ‘outback’ was used for large scale agriculture by indigenous people before colonisation (Pascoe, 2014). Pascoe (2014, 224), argues strongly that the pre-colonial outback, was definitively not the inhospitable wilderness it is today. It is then the colonial involvement, through soil degradation (Pascoe 2014, 21) that created the hostile ‘low-tech’ outback, glorified in off-roading communities and adds for 4x4 vehicles (Bishop 1996, 262). It was the destruction of land by colonial practices of herding cattle (Pascoe 2014, 28) that destroyed the fertile land and created the ‘hostile’ red wastelands that makes up the outback today.

The value of the outback as ‘rugged nature’ (for off-roading enjoyment), is often gaged in the (in)accessibility of the terrain (Bishop 1996, 264). Thus, by increased connectivity and access through means of paved roads, the outback loses its value as place for off-roading (Bishop 1996, 260). Places that take a long time to get to, or are far away from settlement, are valued as places for off-roading, explicitly because they are hard to reach (Bishop 1996, 264). This is somewhat paradoxical, as four-wheel-drive vehicles are means that reduce this very inaccessibility (Bishop, 1996, 263). Coupe (1994, 27) describes Alice springs, an historical outback town, now connected by bitumen highways with the words: “while allowing access in all directions to the outback, [it] is no longer really of it—a plastic heart in an ancient body." Which of course insinuates that the increased access to the town, has excluded it as part of the outback entirely.