Caravan dad 'blown away' by sketchy problem at Aussie campsites: 'Bogged for days'
When reflecting on Australia's iconic landscape, it's hard not to picture the distinct dusty, red dirt that stretches across the centre of the lucky country. However, that might not be the case for everyone, with a lesser-known 'sketchy' soil creating big problems at caravan parks and campsites, leaving some travellers 'bogged for days'.
When Aaron Schubert, 35, his wife and their two young sons hit the road to embark on a two-year lap of Australia, the dad told Yahoo he was pretty familiar with the 'clay mud' often seen in his home state of WA. But as the family trekked further north and along the coast to Queensland, they were shocked by the stark difference in the dirt beneath their feet.
'We've done a ridiculous amount of 4WDing and black soil was fairly new to us, but it blew me away with how sketchy things can get,' Schubert, who has shared tips about caravanning and camping on his website for 15 years.
Black soil, otherwise referred to as a vertosol, is Australia's most fertile soil and can be found largely across Queensland and NSW, especially in agricultural areas. While it is prime for produce, the cracking clay soil can get 'really sticky' and soft when wet, former president of Soil Science Australia Dr Vanessa Wong told Yahoo.
Unsurprisingly, this has landed numerous campers in quite a pickle, with Schubert saying it's 'very easy for people to get caught out'. 'I was quite taken aback as to how slippery it was on a number of occasions in Cape York,' he added.
One morning, while staying at a caravan park in Karumba, a coastal town in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Schubert told Yahoo he awoke to find some cars 'stuck at the bottom' and wandered down to see what was going on.
'I nearly stacked it in my thongs. You don't even have to sink into [black soil]. There's just zero traction,' he said. 'We went to another campsite not long after and there were cars that were bogged for five or six days. They just had to wait for it all to dry out.'
In nearby Normanton, Schubert popped into the visitors centre and learned multiple campers had gotten stuck near a river after ignoring a warning to move before the rain set in.
'They'd rung up asking for recoveries, with some people saying their van started sliding towards the river at night when the rain hit. If you imagine the slipperiest stuff you can stand on, black soil is pretty similar!
'If there's black soil on the surface and it rains, that's it — you're in big trouble.'
Schubert, who returned home to Perth late last year, said his family avoided getting bogged by being 'pretty cautious' and consistently keeping an eye on the weather.
'I think that applies in general to 4WDing. You don't want to be at the top or bottom of a mountain if it's gonna rain because you it doesn't have to be black soil for you to end up in a world of pain.'
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In Australia, there are several kinds of vertosols — black soil is just one of them, Dr Wong said. It shrinks and swells depending on whether it's wet or dry, with some farmers reporting losing entire fence posts in the soil's large cracks.
'Clay soils can be found all over the world but Australia has the largest variety of these shrink/swell soils — it's one of the really neat things about the Aussie landscape. They also make up a large area relative to our land mass which is probably why people keep coming across them,' Dr Wong told Yahoo.
'These soils can be quite deep so once you get stuck in them they get really, really sticky because of the clay contents. There's nothing underneath to stop you from sinking.'
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