So I’m gonna share a story. In this story I’m a fucking idiot. But I hope that it serves as a warning to someone so they can learn from my dumb mistakes. So I was going out to see some mates the other day in a big state forest near Melbourne.
Decided to take my car (a mid sized AWD SUV) rather than the wife’s small FWD sedan. This proved to be a very good choice. Mind you, my car may be awd but its for like a slightly damp soccer field carpark, not what I accidentally forced it into.
I set google maps on car play and off I go.
Traveling into the park with basically no phone coverage everything going fine till suddenly get told to turn off a decent gravel path onto a side road. No warnings or anything, and again maps said go this way. So I did. It looked OK to start with, but by the time I realized I was was in trouble it was too late.
The road degraded to a goat track and I start sliding down it with no chance of turning around and no phone data to be able to reroute anyway. Maps said I was 10 minutes from meet up point so I decided to push on not really having a choice.
Soon enough i come to a patch of very wet deep tyre tracks. so long as I stick to the high ground I’ll be fine. You can see where this is going, cant you? Yep. She slid straight off the highground into foot deep giant puddles of mud and immediately got bogged.
Chucked the car in mud mode, managed to reverse 2 feet before I couldn’t go any further, put the car back in drive and took off at speed but just got stuck in the same spot again and this time couldn’t reverse.
Now I didn’t panic. That probably saved me. It woulda been easy to accidentally dig her in. My hear beat about 170bpm, but I got out and as calmly as I could assessed the situation. No phone coverage. I walked ahead a bit to make sure I was ok to proceed assuming I could even get out of this mess. I could. Even better there was a downed tree. I grab some branches and stick them under the wheels as best I can. it took about 15-20 minutes. With a dashboard full of warning lights I jump back in and take off slowly, feel it grab some traction in my best Jeremy Clarkson impression scream “SPEED AND POWER” and fucking launch the SUV out of there.
Slowly I proceed to the meet point passing a proper 4x4 who looked at me with shock and horror on his face. A poor little SUV so far out of its depth it wasn’t even funny and an idiot who almost got himself in serious trouble.
I meet at the meeting point and my friends laugh. They approached from another direction and has 0 issues on a smooth gravel road. They all used Google Maps too, it just sent them in a different way for some reason.
So. What did I learn and why am i telling this story? a few key points:
- If your going bush, even on GOOD roads make sure someone knows where you are
- If you start to get into trouble: Reverse. Even if you have to reverse 500m! Dont commit to the fuck up assuming it’ll get better.
- Google maps has no concerns about sending you down tracks that even a dirtbike would struggle with 0 warning.
TLDR: I’ve become one of those “I was just following the GPS” people.
I’m glad you’re alright. I remember I was in the car with someone once and we were going to look at Trentham station at night time (odd choice of place to go at night, I know, but it’s a long story). We missed our turn off onto the road the station was on, so rather than getting us to chuck a U turn somewhere, it decided our best option was a 20 min, 4km detour through the state Forest.
Being young and dumb, I figured since we weren’t in a rush, we may as well do it, after all, google maps is usually alright (at least from my perspective as a city dweller). Right after going around a bend it turned from well maintained gravel into a dirt track, and we nearly got bogged. We ended up deciding it was better to find somewhere to turn around, rather than brave another 3km of what was essentially a muddy Mario kart-eque road. We did make it out safely, but it did take a 7 point turn to get out of it
Also, this story from 2012 comes to mind: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-maps-gets-drivers-lost-in-australian-outback-police-warn/. When apple maps first launched, they had Mildura listed as being in the middle of that national park, nowhere near where it actually is:
Thank you. The irony of the situation is I used google maps over Apple cause I was worried about something like this happening.
All maps will have errors.
Even OSM has errors and can sometimes have bad actors and commercial intretests deliberately vandalise content.
If you want to carry a definitive, (relatively) accurate map in Victoria, the VicEmergency App is free and usually has current map data and also has reasonable up-to-date incident conditions. I assume other states have similar services.