Outback anxiety can stalk you like a Liberal Party staffer in Parliament House after midnight. It can sneak up on you like John Jarratt in a Wolf Creek sequel and lay you bare to the arse before the full moon. There is nothing quite as disconcerting as the immense outback pulsating in its all its banal glory. I remember the first time I ventured out into its voluminous terrain. It had me quivering like a Peach Melba in the sun. Outback anxiety: Fear of the Australian landscape is as real as Covid-19 and the lunar landing in Trump’s America. Fear of “The Bush”, the Australian Bush, used to mean, to Australian men, fear of womens’ bush – the hairy vagina – in this post-Brazilian universe it now means something ever-more sinister, as apartment dwelling soy-latte-sipping Aussie urbanites hardly venture past their city’s outer suburbs. Beyond the fringes, they’re terrified – isolation manifests as night terrors in places where no-one can hear you scream.

Wake in Fright Australia

This means that for the uninitiated it’s good to tag-along on a guided Outback tour. You don’t want to Wake in Fright in a bucket of your own vomit following a big night out on the town. Country people in Australia are a distinctly different kettle of fish. There are good reasons why they live so far away from everyone else. Outback anxiety is very real under the malevolent night sky deep in the desert and the bush. The cry of a lone dingo echoes across the plain. The ceaseless hum of cicadas can tip some folk right over the edge.

Aussie Panic Attacks & the Great Outdoors

Agoraphobia is like an escape room terror mounting within. There is nowhere left to hide from the maelstrom that is Outback Anxiety. It can choke you out like Michael Hutchence on the back of a hotel room door. What seems like a pleasant sunset can turn into a full-blown panic attack beneath the southern cross. Too many kangaroos hopping across the surface of an endless vista can spark trauma in many unsuspecting viewers. Knowing just how many highly poisonous snakes and spiders coexist on this island continent can be too much for some. I know, I have seen the collateral damage strewn across national parks and tinpot towns right around this nation.

Outback anxiety: Fear of the Australian landscape is more prevalent than many care to admit. It may just be this country’s greatest best kept secret and shame. There are things that you do not do in Australia. Things that are unwise, especially in the bush. You do not buy seafood when you are situated hundreds of kilometres from the coast. You do not go home with certain night-time partners after consuming a skinful at a One Nation fund raiser. You do not decide to walk back to your digs after partying God-knows-where and dropping God-knows-what. Everything in the outback is big and largely unknown. Leave the wildlife alone and it may just leave you alone.

As writer Stewart Dawes famously tweeted, none of us want to die by the hands, feet, teeth, knife or gun of someone or something with a lower IQ than us. That’s the ultimate human indignity. Staying out of trouble or danger is smarter, even if it is cowardice.