We’ve been through the ‘what not to leave home without’ in the way of commonsense fix-it items like fencing wire, baling twine, duct tape, etc. But what happens when you are on your own without help and you get bogged in a remote location, with no phone service and not enough range to work repeater channels on the UHF? You can’t exactly eat duct tape, can you?
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Enter the ‘Oh Sh*t Kit’.
A brilliant idea thought up by a brainy bunch of lads and lasses in East Gippsland that may have just saved your bacon.
Our kit is just a regular plastic cliptop box of a decent size. It is basically a ‘forbidden to open unless emergency’ box. In it are personal items that will keep us fed, watered and comfortable until help arrives.
Now I know you may be thinking: ‘How would someone get themselves into such a situation’? Well we have been in one. I can tell you it can happen in the absolute blink of an eye. Being local to the Victorian High Country is brilliant – it means we can head out for a day trip and enter some of the most remote and rugged country in Victoria and be back before nightfall.
Of course we always take the basics with us; spare fuel, water, a chainsaw, etc. Just enough to survive if the worst happens. But seeing as the worst never did happen we were pretty careless about such things … until a certain day trip that left us bogged on a precariously muddy, slippery mountain with the back wheel in mid-air over the cliff.
On our own. Minimal supplies. Remote country.Stuck.
Fast forward a number of hours of calling repeater channels and an 8km hike up a cliffside and back for a very lucky one bar of phone service. Help was finally on its way, and now all we had to do was wait.
It wasn’t the worst situation, we had enough food and water to keep us comfortable; but looking back now I marvel at the things I would have done for a kit like this.
Each kit is a do-it-yourself deal. You fill it with comfort items that you would need in an emergency. Items such as tinned food, a first aid kit, a foldable shovel, insect repellent, a blanket, extra water, matches, chocolate, dunny roll … and the list goes on. We have personalised ours with a small bottle of diesel to help get a fire going in wet weather, a spare pair of socks, a billy, two mugs and some tea, a multitool and some common painkillers.
Basically this kit stays tucked in a corner of the 4X4 until a time when you need it most. In the situation I mentioned earlier, a kit like this would have kept us very comfortable. We have two four wheel drives, and we have one of these kits in each car now. We don’t even go to the pub without it!
Now this may be something you have heard of before, or indeed thought of. But the first time I ever came across the idea, it was a bunch of mates who put it together for us as a gift … and it even came complete with a spare tin of dog food so the woofer didn’t go hungry!
Your kit can be whatever you want it to be. It can be as simple as a bottle of water and a tin of food that you never eat unless in an emergency, or it can contain enough stuff to keep you comfortable for a few days.
It really doesn’t matter what your kit looks like, as long as you actually have one.
WORDS AND IMAGES BY SHANNON PETERS
