The $13 fill-up: The spark that may fuel country town revivals

Everyone knows of little towns bypassed by highways or time, but not everyone actually sees them any more.

Some have shrunk into obscurity, inhabited largely by ageing couples, their children gone to the big smoke. Some survive quietly and gracefully, away from bellowing trucks and endless travellers who once passed through without stopping.

Others thrive by making the best of what they have: rural industries, the natural beauty of their countryside, galleries, bakeries, restaurants specialising in local produce, immigrants looking for opportunities beyond the big cities.

Plenty of those bypassed or half-forgotten villages and towns, however, have lost business to big, soulless service centres that sit out on the highway, where travellers make a single stop to fill up on fuel, coffee, fast food and cool drinks.

Many out-of-the-way places, of course, have become beneficiaries of the rise of “grey nomads” – time-rich travellers navigating caravans and motorhomes around the country.

But what if a side effect of the suddenly unaffordable cost of fuel for many such travellers, thanks to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s out-of-control war on Iran, were to persuade more travellers to turn off the highways and discover the attractions and easygoing pace of life to be found in country towns?

It’s already happening, and apparently gathering pace.

I still drive a diesel-powered vehicle, I confess, performing an eye-roll at the ballooning price of fuel every time I fill up, worrying about future war-created shortages.

Friends and relatives who own electric vehicles, however, declare their approach to cross-country travelling has become more relaxed and enjoyable since making the switch from the internal combustion engine.

My colleague Bianca Hall recently reported a camping holiday by EV is genuinely fun for a young family, not to mention beneficial for the environment.

One of my sisters-in-law and her partner have just completed a camping trip from Canberra to Adelaide and back in their electric car, accompanied by a friend who drove his EV from Queensland.

Initial range anxiety, they say, was replaced with the comforting knowledge that numerous regional and rural towns now boast chargers for electric vehicles.

EV-related apps made it simple for them to map an absorbing trip with stops every few hundred kilometres. The apps identifying locations of charging stations invariably directed them to the centre of towns and villages that sit off the main roads, because that’s where the chargers were located – often next to visitor centres.

They left the highway “McService” centres to internal-combustion travellers wincing at fuel prices, and found themselves deliberately taking roads less travelled, discovering often lovely little places they barely knew existed.

Our EV travellers even began avoiding superchargers that could replenish their batteries in just a few minutes. Instead, they plugged in to slower chargers and set off for a stroll.

They enjoyed coffee at little cafes, browsed the shops, visited the bakery or made an excursion to a grocery store for the makings of an on-road meal. They spent cash they otherwise would have sunk into petrol or diesel, and admired lovely old country architecture.

The only concern, they said, was if they were to come across a charging station that wasn’t working.

It never happened. Regardless, they made sure they never allowed their battery to run low with a long stretch ahead by topping up strategically.

A charge rarely cost more than $13. The entire trip of 2800 kilometres cost them $220 for electric power.

Petrol at current wartime prices for a family car would set you back, conservatively, around $500 for the same trip. Diesel? Oh, perhaps $750 – and at least twice that if you were towing a caravan.

If this all sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish and even a touch evangelising, it may be. But our travellers felt there was a broader story to consider.

As charging infrastructure inevitably becomes ubiquitous and as more motorists embrace EVs, many small country towns could be revived, they contended.

There were still a great number of towns without chargers, yet to wake up to the potential.

“If we get the infrastructure right, we think more and more travellers will drive into small towns and spend money in local shops while their cars are being charged,” my sister-in-law said. Yes, and they’d discover and spread the word about off-highway attractions long overlooked.

She could be right.

Interest in EVs is reportedly growing fast as Trump’s war continues and Iran responds by keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed to most oil tankers.

The phenomenon is borne out by my own old mates.

Suddenly, several of them have announced they are installing solar-fed batteries and charging points at their homes and moving to electric vehicles.

One of them, a lifelong petrolhead who drove rally cars and whose vehicle for the past few years has been a giant four-wheel-drive ute powered by diesel, announced this week, glory be, that he was about to switch to a fully electric vehicle.

Another took his first EV trip down the coast from Sydney, declaring he didn’t want to sound smug, but hey, it cost almost nothing … and yes, he and his wife had enjoyed wandering around little towns while their car was charging.

There remain, of course, multitudes of naysayers.

Check comments on social media posts concerning new EVs, particularly Chinese utes and big four-wheel-drives, and you’ll see that these newfangled machines are deeply offensive to some traditionalists.

An EV wouldn’t make it across the Simpson Desert or the Gibb River Road or haul a large caravan on the Big Lap, they holler.

Quite (so far), but no one who is half-sensible denies there are good uses for long-distance diesel and petrol machines well into the future.

Meanwhile, is it too fanciful to imagine the rise of EVs and those with enough time to meander through out-of-the-way places – but not willing or able to pay the crippling war-induced price of fuel to haul caravans – might help save bypassed Australian towns gasping for an injection of cashed-up visitors?

Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.