The 'game-changing' trend taking over Australian 4WD camping sites

Aussies are increasingly keen to head off the beaten path with beach driving and off-road 4WD camping rising in popularity since the pandemic. And there's one thing that's growing like mushrooms in camping grounds around the country.

While many are keen to explore more remote parts of the landscape, they're not willing to give up Netflix or their emails. As such, Starlink satellite internet dishes have been proliferating throughout the bush in the past two years.

A tongue-in-cheek post shared to social media on Friday from a camp ground in the Northern Territory showed the growing trend, with a satellite dish pictured sitting on the grass out the front of each camping spot.

"I was there last month and already saw 6 or 7 Starlink units!" one person commented.

The poster joked about the half-hearted attempt by some owners to protect their units by placing small traffic cones and slightly elevated yellow buckets beside them, prompting others to share their own protection methods when leaving the dish on the ground.

"Hahaha after running over ours this is a great idea," one camper said.

"Not a chance mine is EVER going on the ground while travelling. It’s always on a pole on the caravan," another commented.

"I put solar lights around mine at night," one Starlink user offered.

The 'best solution' for life on the road

Aussie couple Dan and Amanda were among the very first adopters of Starlink, even before the service was activated in much of the country. They spent more than two years travelling around Australia in their caravan and run an online business while on the road.

"It's definitely happening," Amanda previously told Yahoo News. "Caravan sites are much busier than when we first started at the end of 2019. We saw the progression of how many families are on the road."

In 2022, Starlink announced a new portability feature, meaning the service was no longer fixed to a home address and users who wished to pay a bit extra could take their dish on the road. The easier portability and the building out of the network in recent years now means Australians can just about work, study or binge Netflix from any part of the country, no matter how remote.

"For anyone who wants to do home schooling, anyone who wants to go on the road and run their business ... it's the best solution," Amanda said.

The availability of Starlink (as well as a potential rival by Amazon coming to market in the future) has gone hand-in-hand with rising 4WD sales. According to the Australian Federal Chamber of Automotive Industry, more than 55 per cent of new car sales last year were SUVs, marking a 10 per cent increase since the pandemic.

The ability for more people to work from home has also coincided with the swelling online presence of influencers who promote #VanLife and share tips about how to create a life on the road.

However the explosion in popularity of 4WD tourism has put pressure on the nation's bushland and coastlines, and even sparked backlash from some longtime campers.

"The influx of influencers and multimillionaires is slowly ruining camping for the folks who are either: not as wealthy, seeking quiet and isolation, or are seeking 'nature'," one person complained in a lively online debate about the exploding popularity of 4WD camping.

"4WD fashion has made vehicles way heavier than they need to be, with huge tyres so they make enormous track ruts and destroy it for the rest of us," another agreed.

South Australia recently had to change the rules around driving on beaches in the state due to the rising popularity and poor behaviour of some drivers.

But for those taking advantage of the technology, there's one term that is frequently used to describe it: "Game-changing".

Caravan World Deputy Editor Allison Watt, who recently documented her 4,788km trip from Melbourne to Cape York referred to Starlink as a "game-changer for reliable communication".

"I was working from the road so needed access to office systems and to colleagues via video calls. And we wanted to be able to communicate with family and friends, regardless of location," she explained in an article for Camper Australia.

For that purpose, it's changed things for her and countless others.

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