It could be a typical barbecue setting with the blokes watching sports on the big screen, the women clustered around the latest episode of Desperate Housewives and the kids off somewhere engrossed in DVDs or PlayStation.
Nothing unusual about this scenario except the group is 500 miles from civilisation in the middle of the Simpson Desert on a four-wheel drive club trip.
The rough and tumble of an outback 4WD track seems an unlikely place to find the latest hi-tech gadgets, but it is becoming the norm for many 4WD club members.
"It’s more and more popular. In our club in the past 18 months technology has started to sneak in," says Len Wellington, the outgoing president of the Dubbo 4WD Club.
"We’ve got almost 100 members and about 40 to 50 percent have a technology mix of some sort including laptops, GPS, mobiles and digital cameras."
So much so, that the club has had to run technology education seminars to help its members run all the gadgets they’re getting fitted into their vehicles.
"We did a trip last September to the Flinders Ranges, and of the 10 4WD vehicles on that trip, there were seven laptops in those 10 cars. All for various purposes, downloading digital pictures or running moving maps, he says. In Wellington’s case, he has a laptop with a program called OziExplorer hooked to the GPS. This allows him to run moving maps while out in the scrub so he knows what he is up against next.
What started out as basic safety and convenience has escalated to full-blown off-road multi-media entertainment for some members.
"On one of our trips to the Snowy Mountains, one member had a big inverter (a power converter) in their 4WD and set up a data projector. We all sat around the campfire and showed the photos that everyone had taken during the day on a big screen," Wellington says.
Kind of reminds you of slide-night on steroids.
"That’s not commonplace, but every now and then we’ll do something silly like that. It’s amazing how far technology has come, and what you can do with it in the middle of nowhere."
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| Wellington: Runs technology seminars for members |
The Dubbo 4WD club is also into GeoCaching -- the technological equivalent of a treasure hunt.
"People go out and hide things in the bush, take GPS coordinates, post that on the internet for someone else to go and find. You get the coordinates and plot on the [electronic] map how you’re going to get there. Once you find the 'treasure', you swap the trinkets and write it in a log book. Then you come back home and log it onto the net as well. It’s great fun," he says.
Getting tech support and repairs done can be pretty hard in the middle of nowhere, although Wellington says there is usually someone on the trip that knows enough to have a tinker.
"Some of the places we go are very, very remote, so if you have a major laptop failure then it stays broken until you come back. Some people have had hard drive failures because of the vibrations but we never have. If the track gets too rough, we just turn it off," he says.
The bigger enemy is fine, red desert dust, and delicate equipment sometimes has to be stored in dust-proof containers.
There are the occasional reception difficulties when the GPS is in dense rainforest canopies that block access to the sky, but some of the newer ones with external antennae do not have that sort of problem.
Wellington says club members get around the power-sucking tendencies of tech gadgets by installing solar panels. However, most people run a dual battery system in their 4WD anyway, so they can run their fridges.
"I run an inverter hooked up to the battery and when the motor stops it will run overnight no worries at all," Wellington says.
GPS getting popular
The owner of Sydney-based GPS OZ, Brian Sommerville, says his company is experiencing a steep increase in sales at the moment.
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| A GPS system used in a 4WB |
"We’re up 75 percent compared to last year and up 100 percent compared to the year before that. The technology has become more affordable and it’s now at a point where it’s no longer just techotechnology; it’s now usable by the average person."
He says four-wheel drivers are using notebooks as companion products to other things such as GPS, mobile phones and digital cameras; however, GPS technology is growing at a far greater rate than anything else at the moment.
Some of the Dubbo 4WD club has just started using Bluetooth and relish the freedom from the mass of cords usually spewing from the cigarette lighter. "Some of the newer GPSs will run on Bluetooth back to the laptop rather than having all the cords.
"Some of our members are now running little GPS units which hook on top of palm pilots or Tablet PCs which run their moving maps as well," Wellington says.
While some newer 4WDs now come with all sorts of in-built gadgetry, there will always be those who want something that does not come standard.
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