7 Terrible Travel Experiences From 7 Years On The Road

We’ve been on the road for almost a decade, and we’d be lying if we said it’s been plain sailing the whole time. In fact, some months it felt like we were caught in the middle of a travel-hell storm.

So this month I thought I’d bring some balance to Officer Travels with 7 of our worst travel moments. Some are near death experiences that we didn’t tell family about until looong after it happened, while others felt worse at the time but we can look back and laugh now.

Egged In Nimbin

Let’s kick things off with one that still makes us laugh 6 years later, it had never happened before and it’s never happened since!

There’s a reason we don’t have a post about the best things to do near Nimbin, Australia… We were practically run out of town by boy racers. 

Located an hour inland from Byron Bay, Nimbin is a popular road trip location for those wanting to see a wilder side to life. It’s touted as a freedom loving town with no laws and a unique way of doing things… sounds like the perfect place for van life, right?

Since we were travelling in our small self converted camper, we chose to stay in a seemingly quiet roadside pull-in, about 20 minutes outside of town, and then check out the boutique shops and quirky streets in the morning.

There were none of the usual red flags, no broken glass, no skid marks on the ground, no litter and WikiCamps reviews were good, so we felt safe and the view was amazing.

Around 2am we heard revving and music from cars pulling in next to us. Past experiences had taught us to stay quiet and they’ll leave eventually but as it got close to half an hour, I started to feel uneasy.

With no clue to how many cars were surrounding us, and no idea who those cars belonged to, it felt like an eternity laying waiting for them to leave.

And that’s when it happened.

Three loud thuds on the side of the van, laughter and more tire spinning. Then they were gone. Silence. Not sure if they’d really gone, or if they’d come back, we didn’t check to see what the thuds were.

It wasn’t until the following morning that we got out to assess the damage.

3 smashed raw eggs (now cooked from the heat) decorated the side of our van. Baked on so thoroughly, they actually took off a layer of paint from the panelling. Lovely.

Safe to say we didn’t spend too long in town the next day before heading off for more peaceful spots.

Thanks Nimbin. You’ll forever be remembered as ‘that time we got egged’. 

Near Death On The Diary

Here’s one Dec didn’t tell me about until a few weeks later!!

While working on the dairy farm, Dec got promoted from milker to herder – leaving me down in the poo pits while he got endless fusses from cows who, as it turns out, are total love bugs.

We always knew there were risks with this job.

After all, cows are one of the most deadly animals in Australia if we look at how many people they actually kill each year, as opposed to their ability to kill with a bite or toxins.

I’d already had a near-miss when a cow kicked out and thankfully caught my shoulder, and not my face – leaving a lovely hoof shape bruise for weeks. Another girl wasn’t so lucky and had to go to hospital after it kicked her clean in the eye (Amazingly she was fine aside from bruising and a bit of concussion). And a man we worked with was hospitalised with a rare disease that cows carry.

So we knew there were risks.

What we weren’t expecting was for a cow stampede to be one of those risks, or for one of us to actually experience it.

Now, before I go any further. Let me explain who the heifers are, and why everyone hated them so much.

The heifer herd were the youngest, first time mums, of the whole farm. They were the most stressed and the most easily angered of the lot. I mean, I understand it, the whole milk-production process is stressful for cows.

These were the heard that nobody wanted to milk because of the increased risk of being kicked. If you were unlucky and the previous shift was running late, you’d end up milking these twice… fun.

Anyway, as a herder, Dec’s job was to move the cows from their shed to the milking parlour, through narrow laneways that left little room for error.

The older the cows, the easier they were to move because they knew the routine. They’d practically take themselves there. The heifers? They were almost always the ones to hold us up, would often escape into the yard and you could always hear them coming.

This particular night though something spooked them, probably a snake. I heard the commotion from the milking parlour but it was nothing new, they were always noisy, and always caused havoc for the herders so I thought nothing of it.

Turns out, however, when the cows were spooked Dec somehow lost his footing and ended up on his back… in the middle of a stampeding herd of heifers.

When  he slipped, he spooked them even more and all he could do was hold his breath, tuck his head and neck into his body and wait for them to calm down.

After what probably felt like a lifetime watching hooves run passed his head, he amazingly came away unscathed. I’ve no idea how because heifers are unpredictable and uncoordinated, they kick out and stomp on each other at the best of times. It really is a miracle for him to come away without at least being stepped on once or twice.

Dec Eaten Alive

I swear it’s not always Dec getting into mischief but I couldn’t resist including this one on our list of worst travel moments from the last decade.

We had set up camp at a marshland not too far from Airlie Beach. Being the nature lovers that we were, we started prepping dinner with the van door open so we could hear the birds and cicada while we ate. It’s something we tried to do often because it really helped us appreciate where we were and unwind after a busy day driving.

After enjoying an evening surrounded by nature and no other campers, we settled in for the night commenting on all the little bugs that had gotten in…

The next morning Dec woke up with his legs absolutely covered in bites. I had one or two but Dec had hundreds and that’s not an exaggeration. We counted 72 on one leg. Both legs were red, sore and starting to swell.

Have I ever told you Dec’s the only one who drives?

If he’s ever unable to, we’re stuck.

After a couple of hours his legs weren’t getting better. In fact, they were getting worse and he was getting more and more uncomfortable.

On a budget and wanting to get to Cairns to find our next lot of work, staying in one place for too long always felt like a waste of resources and a huge risk – especially in somewhere like Airlie Beach where there’s limited free camping, and limited budget friendly accommodation. 

We had a choice to make.

Keep going and hope it gets better, knowing we were heading to less populated areas or… stay put and spend money we didn’t necessarily have?

Of course we took the sensible option and booked a hotel. One with a pool, hoping it would sooth the bites. Bites that we now knew were sand flies and Dec seemed partially allergic.

With a good soak and some antihistamine cream, they cleared up within a couple of days. We didn’t hesitate at getting a bug screen for the door after that.

I guess looking back I’m thankful it happened there and not in the outback… but then, we do have a story from there too…

Loss Of Our Hard Drive

Before we talk about our outback experience, let’s talk about some heart break and an emotional breakdown in an airport, shall we?

This one still gives me a lump in my throat, but there’s a lesson to be learned here… as with all bad travel experiences

I started writing about this years ago as a blog post of its own. It probably still could be. It’s still raw even 6 years later.

Let me set the scene. We had just completed our first full year of travel around Australia, China and Indonesia, and were heading back to the UK for a friend’s wedding.

We’d been to so many bucket list locations including Nusa Penida before they built hotels and a proper track to Kelingking beach.

Our hard drive was brimming with photos, all we needed was decent wifi to back them up to some cloud storage. You know… just in case.

Dec killed some hours on the plane editing photos and getting the hard drive organised. I slept and binge watched a few films. Fast forward to getting off the plane…

We were just getting to passport control at Heathrow and, to this day I don’t know why, but I turned to Dec and asked if we had everything. Something in me was saying we’d forgotten something.

Phone, passports, camera, drone… yep, we had everything.

Passing through passport control, it hit us. 

HARD DRIVE.

Where the F was the hard drive? We pulled our hand luggage apart but couldn’t find it. We rushed to the first member of staff we came across. We could still see the plane. Surely they could let us back on to get it or send a member of staff to get it for us?

We were directed to the other end of the terminal and instructed to use the phone on the wall to speak with the office of lost and found… but our hard drive was right there. We could picture exactly where it was. If someone could just go get it?

The guy on the phone sounded lazy. He’d clearly had a bad day and simply couldn’t be bothered. Or maybe that’s my bitterness clouding my memory. Either way, he said he couldn’t help. I’d have to register it as lost through the 3rd party company that Heathrow uses, and hope that it was handed in.

But it’s right. THERE. Surely there’s cleaners on the plane, or other airline staff who could get it?

Apparently that’s not how they do things at Heathrow and we would have to register it as lost then wait. And pray.

I’m not ashamed to say I cried and pleaded with the faceless guy on the other end of the phone. He had no idea how truly priceless this hard drive was to us. He didn’t seem to care either,

After an hour of pleading and trying different staff in different offices, we faced the music, downloaded the app and reported it as lost… then took to twitter and my airline worker friends to see if there was anyone out there who could help… but it was no use.

3 weeks passed in the UK and we heard nothing. I even reached out to Singapore airport because I’d found out that’s where the plane headed after Heathrow, and a friend who’s an air hostess said there was a chance it might get handed in there instead.

It didn’t. Of course.

We arrived back at Heathrow for our return flight to Aus early, because I was adamant it would be waiting at the lost and found reception. 

This is where I had another meltdown because the lady at this desk was rude as hell, and wouldn’t look through the items. She said our description was too vague, and we couldn’t prove the item was ours… it was an orange and silver hard drive. No distinguishing features on it but it was password protected. If she had one, we could prove it was ours.

It sounds silly to get so emotional over a hard drive but it held so many special memories. I felt like my soul needed it back, otherwise that whole year would feel like  it never happened. I’m sure some of you can relate to that. 

We got passed from office to office again, each time feeling certain that it would be there waiting. One guy even took pity on us and handed us a whole box full of hard drives to look through but none of them were ours.

Soon enough, it was time to get sorted for our outward flight and abandon our search for that precious hard drive.

Remember the faceless guy who told us it wasn’t protocole to send someone back onto the plane for lost property? I found out from a member of British Airways management that what he said was a lie.

It’s quite common for people to leave things behind, and after checking the system she told me they had sent someone back on board our flight not long after I called the office. Why?… To pick up a lost jumper.

Had the faceless guy on the phone passed on our report, we would almost certainly have got our hard drive back within an hour. It was like rubbing salt in the wound.

We’d done everything we could to get it back but due to someone else’s laziness – I refuse to say mistake – we’d lost a whole year of memories.

Moral of the story? Don’t live life behind a camera, and always have cloud storage set up at the same time. The only reason we have some photos of that first year is because we had some on our phones, and a handful that we posted to Facebook.

Heartbreak doesn’t cover it and what’s worse… this wasn’t our only issue with British Airways this day:

Visa Rejection

This one caused a full blown, very public, very emotional, meltdown.. After losing the hard drive, all we wanted to do was get on a plane back to Australia and start making more memories.

If only it was that simple.

Handing the receptionist our passports, we watched as she scanned them. Her face changed from a polite smile, to a small frown. She scanned them again and then awkwardly adjusted in her seat before sliding our passports back across the desk.

What she said next will haunt me forever…

‘I’m sorry, you don’t have a visa for Australia. We can’t let you board’.

…I’m sorry what?

Well. I burst into tears almost immediately. I’m certain I almost crumbled to the floor, blockbuster movie style. Only one more blow away from a panic attack. With the stress of losing our hard drive and the emotions still raw from saying bye to family again, it was all too much.

I could relay our whole conversation, it’s firmly imprinted in my memory, but I won’t.

What I will say is we went back and forth with our visa details, how we worked so hard to get our second year, showing our visa confirmations and arguing over the wording of when it was valid to.

I 100% knew that we did have a visa. This is not something I would ever make a mistake on. I check and triple check everything.

‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do’

We weren’t accepting that, and thankfully Dec kept a level head, which is how we ended up speaking with management of British Airways, because there was a mistake and we needed to board that flight.

Luckily the kind manager took one look at me (still sobbing), agreed there must be an error somewhere, and decided to call immigration in Australia. 

I won’t blame you for not believing what happened next because I’m not sure I do either.

Our visa had been cancelled once theBritish Airways receptionist scanned our passport, because they believed it to be a fraudulent copy.

According to Immigration, our original passport had never left Australia, despite us going to Bali for a week and the UK for three…

How the heck does that even happen? We had our passports scanned and checked multiple times since leaving Australia!

To resolve this issue, they wanted proof of identity (umm.. Our ‘fake’ passports?) and proof that we had actually left Australia.

As luck would have it, I’m a ticket hoarder. I had every. Single. Ticket. From arriving in Australia, travelling for the year and leaving again!

I quickly sifted through my ticket stash, grateful that I chose not to leave them with family, and pulled up all my email confirmations as additional proof. Adding them to the ever growing pile in front of the receptionist who was growing increasingly more awkward, probably regretting saying there was nothing they could do.

The sheer relief I felt hearing the manager say she had fixed it and we could board the flight. I could have cried again and in all honesty, I did, once we were on the plane!

She also apologised for everything we’d been through – including the whole hard drive debacle! – and upgraded our tickets to business class lounge access (not business class seating. I wish!) but because it took so long to fix our ban, we only got 10 minutes to enjoy it before boarding our flight.

I’m not sure what the lesson is with this one – don’t fly British Airways? Always get to the airport 3 hours early? Always keep copies of your tickets for everything? 

Either way I’m pleased to report we’ve had no issues with our passports since then. Even if we do get a bit more anxiety than we used to.

Near Death In The Outback

This is probably the one you’ve been eager for. The story that was kept to ourselves for years before we finally told our family. The last thing we wanted was for them to worry about us any more than they already did, even if we had been living in the van for over a year at this point!

Our Australian Outback road trip was off to an amazing start. We’d made it inland from Townsville and were finally heading North on the Stuart Highway towards Darwin, where we’d then turn around and head all the way South to Adelaide, via Uluru. It was a trip of a lifetime.

We were almost at Elliot, perhaps 30 minutes away. We’d seen nothing except roadkill, and a few wild cows on this 229 km stretch of road. All we had was each other and a whole bunch of downloaded podcasts for the company. It had been this way for the last 4 days.

That was, until we spotted what looked like a dead bird in the middle of the other lane up ahead… and a Ute coming in the other direction.

On these big open roads, it wasn’t hard to see hazards up ahead. We had seen the bird miles off, so the Ute driver must have too… right?

He’d seen the bird, hadn’t he?

As we got closer, it was obvious the other driver was making no attempts to slow down. We were, and it wasn’t even on our side.

He seemed distracted.

This bird was huge. A Wedge Tail Eagle most likely. He had to slow down for this…

We were just a few hundred metres off each other when the other driver finally noticed the thing in the middle of the road and….

Swerved right towards us.

I screamed and covered my eyes. Dec swore. A lot. 

The only thing we could do was swerve away from him, off the road into the dusty ditch. The verges along Stuart Highway are steep in places, so I’m amazed we didn’t flip the van.

Once we came to a stop, I remember seeing the Ute continue to swerve along the road behind us as he fought to keep control of his car, while we were stopped half on half off the road.

The driver never stopped. He never turned around. He just kept on driving.

After checking that we were both ok, we sat in silence for about 5 minutes before continuing on to Elliot where I completely broke down as soon as we stopped. I think we sat by the war memorial for over an hour trying to process what had just happened. 

In reality, the bird wouldn’t have been such a hazard if he had spotted it sooner, and slowed down but the reality is – from our perspective anyway – he spotted it late, didn’t know what it was and swerved to miss it.

He didn’t see the bird, so I doubt he saw us either, before he swerved in our direction.

If you’ve ever been in a near miss like this, you’ll know how many what if’s and maybe’s run through your mind.

Maybe he was falling asleep? Maybe he was texting? What if we hadn’t slowed down? What if he had a trailer? What if we had crashed, he was the only car we’d seen for hours?

So many scary what if’s, that were really hard to ignore for at least a few days after this incident, and let’s just say I was a little less relaxed for the first few days when we set back off towards Uluru.

Our biggest take away from this? I’m not sure there is one? It certainly cemented my spiritual beliefs that there’s something connected to us all. Not God or anything heavily religious but something. 

We’ve had quite a few other ‘bad’ travel moments over the years that didn’t quite make the cut. From running almost completely out of money, to weird stalker old men harassing us while we were parked having our lunch, but one thing has never faltered and that’s our love for van life and the flexible travel that comes with it.

What’s one of your best-worst travel moments that will always stick with you? Let us know in the comments because I know we’ve all got stories like this to tell!