A wild toilet break in the outback

One thing nobody really prepares you for when driving through the Australian Outback is how precious a toilet becomes.

We’d been driving for hours through the vast emptiness of Western Australia. The scenery had settled into a hypnotic rhythm of red earth and roads that disappeared in a perfectly straight line towards the horizon. Every now and then one of Australia’s enormous road trains would appear in the distance. We’d pull slightly to the side as these giants, hauling three or four trailers, thundered past in a cloud of dust. Then the silence returned just as suddenly as they had arrived.

After hours on empty roads, the appearance of a little sign with a toilet symbol felt almost as exciting as finding an oasis. There were no petrol stations for hundreds of kilometres, no cafés to stop at, and definitely no luxury rest areas.

When a lonely bush toilet finally appeared beside the road, I almost wanted to hug it. Almost. Because this was Australia.

By then, every wildlife documentary, travel guide and local conversation had convinced me that anything lurking in a toilet block could potentially kill you. Snakes, spiders, scorpions… even the innocent-looking things somehow had venom.

I cautiously pushed open the door.

Nothing.

I looked around.

Still nothing.

“See?” I muttered to myself. “Nothing to worry about.”

I stepped inside and finally began to relax but I made the horrible mistake to look down in that deep dark bush toilet. That was when something shot out of the darkest corner. Not calmly scurrying across the floor. It was a rat launching itself through the air like a furry missile. Straight at me!

I have absolutely no idea who got the bigger fright. The rat had probably been enjoying a perfectly peaceful afternoon until a giant human barged into its tiny toilet. Meanwhile, I was convinced, for one glorious split second, that I was under attack by some previously undiscovered Australian mutant creature. Whatever dignity I had entered with stayed behind in that toilet.

I burst back outside at a speed I didn’t know I possessed.

Tom looked up from the car.

“Everything okay?”

“There was… something… in there!”

His expression immediately turned serious.

“A snake?”

“Worse.”

“A spider?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“A rat!”

For a brief moment he simply stared at me.

Then he burst out laughing.

“A rat?”

“Don’t laugh! It jumped!”

He laughed even harder.

Looking back, the poor little creature was probably just as terrified as I was. We had simply startled each other at exactly the wrong moment. At the time, however, I was convinced I had just survived one of Australia’s many deadly wildlife encounters.

Turns out it wasn’t the snakes or the spiders that nearly stopped my heart. It was an outraged bush rat defending what was apparently its very own outback bathroom. Sometimes the wildest Australian adventures happen in the places you least expect them.

For the rest of the trip, I became deeply suspicious of Australia’s bush toilets. Whenever possible, I planned my toilet breaks at the occasional road house instead. And if there wasn’t one for hundreds of kilometres, I’d happily settle for what looked like a perfectly innocent bush along the roadside. At least there, I could see what was coming.