Outback Help - Strange Question

Hi everyone,

This is one of the strangest travel questions i've written on here but any help would be really really gratefully appreciated.

Okay, so i'm writing a movie script and alot of it is set across the outback of Australia.
The main character leaves Sydney in a car one morning and stops at a campsite that evening, events occur and he is without a car from then on so he starts walking across the outback, it's about 5-6 days later when he comes across a gas station. Now i know its a very rough and very strange and probably unplausible question but can anyone offer assistance with where his location would be after these 5-6 days? Is there a small community anywhere after that amount of walking? If not, i understand as the outback is very very large, what would be the nearest town with a police station?
When he is picked up from the gas station on the 6th day he is taken to a police station and i'd need to know where that could plausible be.

I hope this makes sense and people can help.

Thanks
James

Ha ha wolf creek of course!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek_(film)

Anyway, it takes you about 50km to leave greater Sydney, that going in a NW direction. So say while driving he drove 150km-200km (reasonable drive), and you walk about 4km per/hour and maybe walk 8 hours a day so 8*4 = 32km per day * 5 days = 160km. That means he is now 150km + 160km = 310km NW of Sydney, so go to multimap and see where that is, this is all assuming he walks NW, NW from Sydney will eventually take you to Alice Springs and beyond.

[ Edit: Edited on Nov 21, 2008, at 11:29 AM by andy11 ]

I think the hardest part will be finding a campsite 5 days walking from civilization in any given direction when you start with the premise of having Sydney as the starting point; that's the most populous part of Australia, and most campgrounds would be right near a town. Probably your best bet would be something in a National Park or Nature Reserve or something similar, but does your character have motivation for going into such a place? Or does he think he's going someplace specific? Because if so, he'd be following the main highways, and although he could get into sparsely populated regions after a day's hard driving, it'd be really hard to get him far away from those highways, as there'd presumably be plenty of campgrounds right near the highway. And since this character drove to the campground, he should have been able to follow the road back out, so why would he set off in a different direction? (Maybe you could make the character see a town easily accessible by going cross-country from the campground, which'd then turn out to be a ghost town, so he'd need to head on further. Don't know if there's any eligible ghost towns around though...)

[ Edit: Edited on Nov 21, 2008, at 3:29 PM by Sander ]

You would really need to drive solid for 2-3 days to get into the barron outback, how about him and some of his mates plan to road trip from Sydney to Perth and after a few days on the trip you can take it from there.

5 - 6 days walking? At a guess maybe Bathurst if he's heading west.

Alternatively, why don't you change the script and have the character somewhere list in the Blue Mountains?

If the guy leaves Sydney in the morning and drives until the evening, that would probably be about 8 hours driving time, so going west he would end up at a campsite at Nyngan or Condobolin or somewhere. There's a camp site in the caravan park at Nyngan. Walking say 25-30km a day from there would take him to Cobar, an outback NSW mining town, which has a police station. Hope that helps

Thank you all kindly for your assistance, i think i have some good information there.

This Cobar place, i assume its small and the police station would be tiny?
Just trying to picture it in my head so i know what im writing about.

Also, say he was picked up and taken to Cobar police station, from there where is the nearest large city that he might be transferred to?

Quoting deadmanmoz

Thank you all kindly for your assistance, i think i have some good information there.

This Cobar place, i assume its small and the police station would be tiny?
Just trying to picture it in my head so i know what im writing about.

Also, say he was picked up and taken to Cobar police station, from there where is the nearest large city that he might be transferred to?

Well Sydney of course, yea need to study up on yer geography...?

Canberra is almost as close as Sydney with regard to Cobar though.

But if it's a hospital your after there may be one between Sydney and Cobar...

Cobar isn't really that small in terms of outback towns and most likely he'd be travelling along the highway and would be passed by numerous caravanners and road trains, this is the welcome sign to Cobar, as you can see it's quite busy...

well if you go further than Cobar, west, there's a very small town called Willcania. Just about nothing there.. my sister's car actually broke down near there on a drive from Perth to Sydney... not a great place to be stuck in.. From there, the closest larger police stations would be Cobar or further west, Broken Hill.