Tourist and travellers excreta

now this really is a crap post lol

As you were travelling " on mainly main roads" I don't think the lack of shovel argument holds up. I think governments, state and federal, should spend some of our hard earned taxes and provide decent roadside stops. From my experience they are almost non existent in SA.

I would hazard a guess that you can lay the blame on the uneducated general masses who do not plan their trips well. Generally 4x4 travellers do the right thing due to awareness and truckies frequent the truck stops. There are quite a few new rest areas on the Stuart Hwy north from Port Augusta with state of the art windy loos etc.

TV ads won't help because the people they are targeting are probably not watching the telly. Just look at the QUIT ads............and I am still amazed to see so many people lighting a fag in the street or when they are driving. Or take the NO LITTERING ads....what has that helped?

I am not sure if you could pinpoint the culture of these people...whether they come from a city or country background. The root principle of tidiness and awareness of your health and environment should be taught in schools but I doubt if it is. The younger consumers of our plastic orientated 'throw away' society just lack the brainpower to react beyond their own selfish needs.

It's enough to give you the $hits.

Yup, not the first time it's come up...so to speak. Take a peek at this
http://home.iprimus.com.au/jimshire/loo.html

Cheers
Jim

There is a toilet map of Australia. www.toiletmap.gov.au

Govt grants - your taxes working for you ;>)

No, I don't know who approved it.......

Foury,

Have seen this, to a lesser extent, even on the tracks along the Diamantina, and other parts of west Qld. Once "they" have made a "deposit", its back in the car, and they are 50 clicks away before the "deposit" has cooled down.

As for foreign tourists, I've read that many of their roadside stops are no better than ours, if not worse, because of the volumes of traffic.

Just because we can stand erect doesn't mean we're no longer an animal.

Hooroo...

Of course the Canberra bureaucrats may have been assuming that everyone looking for a toilet has a laptop hooked to a mobile with access to an ISP.

And has no sense of urgency either....

Still, it's probably more useful than the fridge magnet terrorist warnings.

This is a major problem. Some of the blame can be leveled at wild dogs that dig up the waste but a lot is just lazy people. Some of the worst cases accur at night when the 'donor' is reluctant to move to far away from the vehicles lights. Some attemps to build composting public tiolets have left the park managers with a major public relations headace, for example the tiolets at Delhousie Springs, when they were built the parks though that the problem was solved but the public emtied there rubish in to the tiolets and the composting pits were full up to the seats in a few weeks. I can not see the parks people rushing to build more tiolets when there are so many idiots driving around. Eric.

It is one of the most disgusting things leaving poo paper ever where .
I would hate to these peopls back yards if they do this on the side of the road.
I just come back through the centre of QLD and at the truck stops in the middle of no were there is that much rubbish and poo it would make you sick.
I pulled over at a couple to have smoko or lunch and I have never seen so much poo and sorbent flowers just on the side of the road.
All they had to do was walk 20 feet into the scrub and do it.

It makes you wonder.

All the best
Eric

www.capeyorkconnections.com.au

It's not just crap, what about sanitary napkins and disposable nappies which will sit there for years. Some people are just pigs with the thought that once it's dumped I don't have to worry about it any more, just like the bloke I saw last weekend dumping a trailer load of rubbish out on a bush track not all that far from the tip.

Snatchem

Hi all,
You're all correct, it is one of the worst things that you come across in when travelling anywhere around Oz and it does spoil the pleasure of arriving at a campsite, for a well earned break, and having to spend time cleaning up after thoughtless and lazy people. With reference to Willem's comments about including this in 4WD Training courses, it is! and we teach people to take their rubbish with them when they leave! HOWEVER, the 4WD'ers Code of Ethics is only valuble when you observe it. It is getting people to follow it that is the problem!

Regards,
Wayne W.

Yeah let me tell you that 4wds are the worst offenders in our neck of the bush .
We hate the ideas of long weekends and such as the entourage of 4wders who arrive to camp along our rivers etc leave untold masses of sh*t , paper , beer bottles , bundy and coke cans and similar in fact any thing that is not wanted by them it is dumped where they last needed it .90% of people are like this it seems as we do a check of campsites after a long week end and it is amazing how many bush pigs are disguised as people . The areas I'm talking about is Bridle Track , Hill End , Sofala but having travelled around Australia most areas that have high usage are the same , don't know what the answer is when these pigs go and sh*t on the bush but it seems if they looked in the mirror when arriving back they would see the biggest piece of sh*t came back .
Stay at home you filthy pigs and let the fair dinkum campers and travellers , fisherman enjoy the bush with out having to clean up your mess before they can enjoy a pleasant stay in the bush .
Pigs should be allowed only to camp on rubbish tip landfills as they could leave all their crap where they finish with it and Monday morning the dozer would push it over the edge .
I hate the filthy bast*ards .
Ken

Try the Nullabor bush truck stops. Absolute filth by these guys who are on the road so much. Cannot understand their mentality.
It seems that human behaviour is deteriorating rapidly in ALL facets of our life & of we take our leaders worldwide as an example we just seem to be following in their footsteps.
I want mine now & to hell with anyone else seems to be the theme with few exceptions.
It was said on TV tonight that over 60% of Australians did not care that Howard lied! Well does that 60% also lie, probably, & dont bury their waste or care for others.

Toilet facilities are woefully lacking in some states.
In Victoria toilet facilities are everywhere and every town no matter how small the town. Toilet facilities are also available in all Victorian parks and places tourists visit. Generally the toilet facilities are clean and with paper.

NSW and Sth Aust have few public toilet facilities and towns are not required to have toilet facilities like they do in Victoria, or the facilities are locked after 5pm and weekends

Southern Queensland is good on toilet facilities, Queensland smaller towns generally have none, fewer service stations open on weekends in small towns

Western Australia toilet facilities in the towns are fair, very few service stations have toilet facilities, not sufficient rest areas with toilets.

NT generally you don't have an option other than to use the bush

Fewer service stations have facilities and with the arrival of supermarket service stations they have no toilets or rubbish dumping facilities.

Some toilets are so disgusting you would not use them.

Governments should put money into public facilities and maintaining them for the masses instead of funding so much money for Olympic sport that gives a few to much and nothing to the masses.

I loathe nappies and other toilet rubbish but people do get caught you cannot control kids and elderly when they do and when they dont

I carry a fold up stainless steel spade with pouch available from most camping shops.

As was said above, I'm not sure you can blame the problem on a particular group or race. Probably the only thing the culprits have in common is total disregard for the environment, visual impact or hygiene. On a recent trip down the NW Coastal Hwy here in WA we stopped at a very well set-up and frequented roadside rest area. Despite there being 2 very clean, enviro friendly long drop toilets there was still heaps of used toilet paper etc lying unburied right around the perimeter. I can't fathom it!

A couple of years ago, hubby insisted on getting a portable chemi-loo which at the time I thought was a bit soft. Boy, haven't I changed my tune. No more smelly, fly-blown, filthy public loo's for us. If there's nowhere to empty the loo when required we simply dig a single deep hole into which is emptied an odour free sludge (the toilet paper is broken down very quickly by the chemicals). Oh yeah, and before any of you say but what about the chemical factor...we looked into this issue very carefully including contacting various manufacturers. The trick is to use the green chemical (instead of blue) as it is enviro friendly. If used in the correct amount, any active components are "used-up" and exhausted during the process so what is eventually disposed of is a neutral sludge.

Personally, I'd like to see every traveller in remote area's use a chemi-loo. I know of several WA coastal station stays that have embraced this approach and have gone so far as to require the use of chemi-loo's whilst on their property. Even the most conscientiously buried waste is often dug up by animals leaving toilet paper to blow around and attract masses of flies. Also, we've camped in plenty of places (particularly up north) where the ground is so rocky or hard you can barely scrape 1mm of soil off the bedrock, let alone actually bury anything. And finally, consider some of our desert regions where the dry arid climate means that human waste and toilet paper can take literally years to break down.

Getting off my high horse now...

:o) Melissa

My lasting impression of our trip to the Cape last year was the amout of Crap & toilet paperin close vicinity to the camping areas. At the risk of offending, though I dont wish to, Women are obviously the worst offenders. I can see the day coming when we wont be allowed to travel to these remote places without stopping at a check point where an inspector will ensure that we are carrying our own porta porti.

Problem is by voicing our concerns here, we are praching to the converted. Not sure how to get the message out to the offenders.
CU in the bush (hopefully not going to the toilet) :-)
Wheeler