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The great Australian camping getaway has come a long way from rolled-up swags and billy tea under the stars, thanks to game-changing gadgets to level-up our outdoors experience.
Now a picture of a Queensland tourist hotspot has revealed a new tech trend taking over caravan parks and camp grounds around the country.
A man in Airlie Beach in Far North Queensland shared a photo of a small stretch of a campsite with five 4WD vehicles parked under tall palm trees.
The photo also shows four white panels pointing up at the sky – which, though relatively inconspicuous, are part of a growing cohort of Starlink satellite users around Australia.
The man captioned the photo, which was posted to a Facebook group for Australian Starlink users: “New game: Spot the Starlink”, saying there were four SpaceX-produced satellite panels within the stretch of six campsites.
The group has nearly 50,000 members, many of whom were quick to share their thoughts on the device, calling it the “latest flex in caravan parks”.
“And it’s only going to increase. Loving my Starlink!” one man commented.
Another wrote they just left the campground and “definitely” saw “a few others” with the dishes.
“Lots of dishies to be found”, someone else wrote.
But one commenter disagreed, writing: “Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than going on holiday and taking the internet with me”.
The man who shared the photo defended the panel, saying it allowed him to work remotely to stretch out his three weeks of leave into a five week holiday.
A number of members of the group have shared pictures of their on-the-road Starlink setups, suggesting the SpaceX tech is part of a growing trend among modern campers.
The satellite dishes are a products from Elon Musk’s SpaceX which use a constellation of 4000 low-earth orbit satellites around the world to beam high-speed internet to users who host the dishes.
There are plans to increase the number of orbiting satellites to 12,000.
Australians have been able to access Starlink internet since 2021, and the network has more than 120,000 subscribers around the country.
The company offers one plan with unlimited data, boasting download speeds of up to 240Mb/s-plus – almost 10 times the advertised speed of the National Broadband Network’s Sky Muster service.
The only “catch” is that users need to install the dish themselves.
One family who run the Instagram page Our Whittle Adventure said Starlink “changed everything” for them within a month of using it.
After being hesitant at first, because of how expensive it was and knowing they “managed so well for over [two] years without it, the couple decided to “bite the bullet” and haven’t looked back.
“We are now confident to be anywhere for those working days, the Wi-Fi calling works a treat with no noticeable delay, the download speeds are ridiculous, (280mb at the moment),” they said in a post to their Facebook page.
“Its also added another sense of security for us being able to contact family and friends wherever we are.
“The only real downside we have for it, is that it needs 240vAC so we need to run our inverter to power it.”
Another Aussie couple, Amanda and Dan, had been travelling around Australia with their young daughter for two years while running an online business selling Dan’s landscape photography.
The couple first used Starlink in Fowlers Bay in South Australia – “which had zero bars of 3G reception” where people had to stand still and “hope to connect to Telstra”.
Dan told Yahoo Australia they set up Starlink on top of the caravan and had 350 megabit download speed almost immediately – which is about four times the average speed for fixed line broadband services in Australia.
He told the online outlet “it’s the best thing since sliced bread”.
“For anyone who wants to do home schooling, anyone who wants to go on the road and run their business … it’s the best solution,” Amanda said.
Another potential downside, though, is that the dish does require a clear line of site to the satellites – so any surrounding trees may cause dropouts – and users need to consider how they’re going to power the panel while on-the-road or off-the-grid.
The growing popularity of the dishes not only points to a growing trend in the camping experience and a move towards remote-living, but also exposes a major flaw with Australia’s telecommunications networks.
Starlink, as well as other start-ups, has overtaken the NBN which uses two 6.5-tonne high-earth orbit satellites to service Australian homes and has slower speeds and data caps that have tarnished the user experience.
Do you use Starlink? What has your experience been like? Continue the conversation – georgina.noack@news.com.au
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