A lone journalist on the outback beat needs more than a sturdy ute, writes John Andersen. Artwork by Karl Hilzinger 

Itell people that my office is the front seat of my Toyota ute. The rare times my wife steps into the passenger seat she invariably complains about the mess. “When are you going to clean it up?” she moans as she repositions phone books, notepads and water bottles so that she can find the seatbelt. “It’s a mobile office,” I tell her. “I need all this stuff.”

My job involves covering North Queensland, collecting stories and photos for the Townsville Bulletin newspaper. It’s a big area, about 500,000 square kilometres, and a lot of it is remote. My beat includes a 600-kilometre stretch of mainland and islands between Innisfail and Proserpine, which is where I spend about half my time. Bowen, Ingham, Tully, Palm Island, Mission Beach, Airlie Beach and the lower Burdekin townships are all regular ports of call.

Some days I work in the Townsville office, but the rest of the time I’ll be somewhere out in the western belt. It’s the western trips that take the time and involve the most distance and planning. It’s more than 1100 kilometres to Camooweal, north of Mount Isa, about the same to Urandangie and more to Doomadgee. In one sweep it’s not hard to chew up 4000 kilometres.

I was sitting peacefully at my desk in the office one day not long after I’d started in 1998, lost in that world you get into when you’re tapping out a yarn, and Rory Gibson, the editor who hired me as the roving ‘on-the-road’ guy walked past and said in a quiet voice: “What the f–k are you doing here?” In other words: “What are you doing here in Townsville?” That was 10 years and 400,000 kilometres ago. Since Gibbo moved on to the best job in Australian journalism – beer writer for The Courier-Mail – I’ve had John Affleck and Mick Carroll as editors, and if anything they ratcheted the job up a notch or two.

And the new editor, Peter Gleeson, has taken off on the same track. More than ever, my working life revolves around ensuring that my laptop, camera gear, aircard, power inverter and vehicle are all in good working order. The last thing I want is to be in the middle of nowhere with a great story and pics to file and find I’ve left a battery charger or the aircard behind. It’s the little things that bring you unstuck.

I can be on the road for days, and occasionally weeks, at a time. Some of my friends and colleagues think it’s one big holiday, being out there, roaming around and harvesting stories and photos, but the reality is a lot different. The driving can be bloody tedious: mile after mile of not much more than corrugated dirt road, introduced mesquite and grazing cattle. But then, it can be pretty damn spectacular. There are the rainforest mountains and the glorious rivers of the coast, and the snappy gums that dot the blood-red inland ranges like pale slashes of the whitest ivory. Great vistas like these breed their own stories and photos, and easily compensate for the hours of boredom behind the wheel. And there’s the spinifex. Always the spinifex and the bleached bones of long-dead cattle, white as snow against the red earth.

Backdrop these canvases against the people who live out here and the pictures and stories all but take and write themselves. I ‘motel’ it most of the time, but on the long trips when I might be spending days in remote areas I am fully self-contained with food, water and fuel. Even on a routine western trip, say, to Richmond, about 500 kilometres west of Townsville, I will usually pack camping gear in case I have to head off into the bush to the north, towards Normanton and Croydon. It’s Murphy’s Law. If you leave the gear behind, a ripper yarn is sure to surface out in ‘tiger country’ and you’ll be belting through the scrub on a wing and a prayer, hoping you don’t get two flat tyres because you only have one spare and hoping that the job doesn’t mean staying overnight. The swag’s at home, stupid, so you’ll be curling up in the front of the ute. And if it’s a routine trip and you take the gear – just in case – chances are you won’t need it.

On long trips where I know I will be in remote areas and that I will have no option but to rough it, I’ve got it pretty much worked out. I don’t carry a lot of whiz-bang bells-and-whistles stuff. It’s a pretty basic kit, but I can get it unpacked and packed in double-quick time.
Because I’m by myself, I’m conscious of safety and started carrying an emergency beacon about 18 months ago. I’ve got two snake-bite bandages jammed down a door well, and cigarette lighters and matches in the glove box and in zip-lock bags scattered around the vehicle. Some people say I go overboard about matches and lighters, but after giving up cigarettes eight or nine years ago I’ve got a thing about being caught without any fire-starters.

My ‘office’ equipment includes the laptop, Next-G aircard, camera, phone, assorted chargers, a fold-up metal table that doubles as a desk, assorted stationery, a fold-up chair and a power inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter and runs the laptop. The inverter means I don’t have to rely on mains power. If I’m in a remote area I can run my laptop indefinitely and send copy from any location. But it doesn’t have to be a remote area. I sometimes use it even on day trips along the coast. Instead of getting back into the office in the evening and sitting down to sort out photos and write a yarn, I’ll sometimes pull up along the highway, plug in the inverter, run an extension lead to the
laptop, write the yarn and send it on its merry way.

I’ve used it on the drive while working with photographers. While driving north at night with photographer Scott Radford-Chisholm, after covering the Central Queensland floods earlier this year, we were able to file while on the move. While he drove I wrote the story on the laptop and sent it. Then we swapped: while I drove he sorted and filed his photos. By the time we got to Charters Towers, about 10pm, the office had had the story and pics for more than two hours.

A couple of months ago I drove into Mount Isa late in the afternoon. The Isa is a boom city. There might be a global financial meltdown happening, but try telling that to a Commodore-driving diesel fitter working six months of the year on a seven-day-on, seven-day-off mine roster taking home $130,000. He’ll look at you and tell you to “tell someone who freakin’ cares”. Young blokes out in Mount Isa don’t drink Fourex or VB any more. It’s all Corona, Heineken and Crownies. It’s the same in all of the mining towns. Welcome to the new west.

Accommodation in Mount Isa can be hard to get. No, make that impossible. There wasn’t a motel bed, a cabin or even an on-site van to be had. There wasn’t even a powered site. I was shown an unpowered site in a far corner of the park, where I figured lepers and other diseased persons were hidden from the world in days gone by. Now it was my workplace. I took a photo and sent it back to the office so they could check out the paper’s new Isa bureau.

With dust and stones and no shade, it wasn’t exactly the last word in luxury, but I was planning on heading up to the north-western corner of the state, and I had all of my gear and was able to set up and get the job done. I had copy to file from the day, and with the inverter it was a hassle-free operation. The inverter is in my ute all the time. Whatever happens, especially when the power is out, I am still able to get copy out, so long as the telephone networks are up.

Fingers crossed, touch wood and all of that, but I’ve never run into major strife. The longest I’ve been bogged while out on a job is four hours and that was in the Burdekin River. There are places where, if you do get into trouble, it is going to be a big problem and you could be there a long time – days, in fact – waiting for help. I do everything I can to avoid getting into situations I might not be able to get out of in a hurry.

For an extended trip that will include remote areas, my gear list includes:u three spare tyres

• 60 litres of fuel
• 10-metre extension lead
• puncture plugs
• 50 litres of water
• axe, tools, jumper leads, towing chain and a long-handled shovel
• UHF radio
• swag, tarpaulin, rope and fishing line
• tinned food (Tom Piper Sweet Curry is hard to beat)
• assorted kitchen gear.

I carry a waterproof steel box, in which I store extra gear such as hard hat, safety vest and steel-capped boots. There are so many job sites now, particularly in the mining industry, where they don’t want to know you if you haven’t got the safety gear. The subs won’t believe it, but I also carry a large Collins dictionary in that box.

And there’s Brownie. This is the name I’ve given a travel bag my sister gave to me 25 years ago. The stitching’s come loose on the handles and Brownie does look the worse for wear, but I take it everywhere. It is ready for deployment at a moment’s notice. Toothpaste, toothbrush, a razor or two, can-opener, jocks, socks, an old pair of runners, a couple of paperbacks, shorts, T-shirt, a can of baked beans, and God knows what else are always in Brownie.My wife has been at me for years to throw out Brownie and buy a new bag. She calls Brownie an embarrassment. But it’s not in me to do it. I can’t get rid of Brownie. We’ve been through too much together. Where I go, Brownie goes.

Working like this, on your own as a photo-journalist, is not everyone’s cup of java. It can be lonely, especially when you are worried about taking a wrong turn or you’re off the main track somewhere west of Burketown and a knock develops in the vehicle and you sit there, white-knuckled behind the wheel, hoping like hell you can get to a road before the vehicle conks out. And because of the distances the days can be incredibly long.

There’s all of that, but what makes it all worthwhile are the people I meet and deal with along the way. Hermits, hard workers, hard cases, hard drinkers, bludgers, millionaires, river-bed Aborigines, dreamers, schemers, scammers and thieves.They’re all out there and they’ve all got a story to tell. It’s telling those stories that keeps me on the road.

John Andersen is a journalist with the Townsville Bulletin and was recognised for his outstanding contribution to Queensland journalism at the 2008 Qld Media Awards

Karl Hilzinger is a Walkley-winning artist with The Australian Financial Review