When I was driving to the Mungalla Station I thought to myself, “What on earth are you doing?!”. The road was a long country road that took me to the middle of nowhere. It was a dusty out-back country Australian road. Good thing a few cars were passing by – one or two.

Feeling my gut instinct, it felt good to go there. Nothing dangerous was on the road ahead of me. You can feel it inside of you when something wrong is about to happen. That’s when you turn around and go back.

I arrived at Mungalla Aboriginal Station and met a new friend on day one – and stayed for a week.

But my gut instinct told me differently on another outback road.

I was to visit my bush friend (location not mentioned on purpose). He knows how to be self-sufficient in the bush including building raised liveable structures and finding bush tucker. It would be great to sit with him for a few days.

He gave me the street name and number and some directions. The directions were difficult to follow. I turned on the NAVMAN for more insight.

Again, out in the middle of nowhere. No cars passed by this time. And my gut instinct was giving me the “get me outta here!” kinda feeling.

After panicking a bit I finally found the street number. Now this is REAL AUSSIE bush we’re talkin about! Dry dirt dusty roads that if it were raining I’d be stuck in there with my 2WD. I saw a teepee (which he mentioned in a message), a shed and a trampoline with children’s toys laying about.

I honked the horn and hollered out a few “COO-EEEs”, but no one was around.

Didn’t take me long to hi-tail it out of there! I still felt that eerie feeling that it wasn’t a good place for me to be.

In a message he said I was close.

The next day I mentioned my experience to some locals who told me that on that street live a group of bikers who shoot people on sight and the police don’t go even down there. The land is cheap and people who want to live self-sufficiently also buy their land there. So, there seems to be a mix of people in this area.

Now, a good point to mention here is that your instinct may not always be correct. For instance, I was once told that wild pigs will charge at you in the bush. Today, I heard a wild pig while bush walking and scampered on top of a boulder and then called my friend – who told me “they’ve always walked away from me”.

But then again, is that a gut instinct or just fear?