John 'Roothy' Rooth

My earliest memories of the bush are from the northern Flinders Ranges where I was brought up on a remote sheep station. My mates were the Adnjamatanal kids who camped in the Frome River when they visited the station store in between walkabout. Like all bush kids back then I learnt to drive as soon as my feet could reach the pedals of the farm trucks. It was dry country and towards the end of the big drought in the 1960's I was sent to school in Adelaide. Seventeen schools and four states later I finished high school in Armidale, NSW and went to work as a bridge carpenter where a mechanical bent saw me spending most of my time servicing and fixing the site machinery.

 

In 1973 after a motorcycle prang and during a teacher shortage in NSW I was offered a scholarship to study History and English at UNE.

The next eighteen months I taught High School before heading bush with my brother to go prospecting.

 

We based ourselves in Lightning Ridge for the next six years where apart from traveling, prospecting and mining I worked as a driver mechanic on harvesters in season, ran a shearing team and did the cooking (and survived!), had several fencing contracts and built specialised mining machinery. These were formative years, living off the land and I loved the egalitarian ideals of the opal and gold fields where all men were treated equally regardless of wealth and where common sense ruled.

 

While outback I began writing and had several bits and pieces published in various magazines. Then in 1987 I was offered a job testing motorcycles for Two Wheels magazine, Australia’s leading motorcycle publication, and that grew into managing FPC's special projects division - starting new magazines in fields as diverse as tattooing (Australian Tattoo) and country music (Australian Country Music).

 

My own interests still hadn’t changed though. I was still spending any spare time traveling and gold panning, camping out and enjoying the freedom of the bush. At first this was on a trail bike until, at 37 years old, I met and married Karen. We bought an old four wheel drive and started spending weekends under the stars.

 

We started a family about the time I left full time work to pursue a mixture of freelancing and tour guide work, specialising in taking overseas trail bike riders across the Simpson and up Cape York. I was still involved in machinery, operating a truck and bobcat business on the side.

 

But by early 2000 the four wheel drive, camping and caravanning lifestyles had really kicked in and I was flat out contributing to Express Media Group magazines like ‘4WD Action’ and ‘Caravan and Motorhome’.

 

My specialties were bush travel stories, bush mechanic tips, buying used vehicles and writing the humor pages. I also worked as the technical writer for the Caravan title where a basic knowledge of engineering and mechanics got mixed with a real knowledge of what Australian roads and tracks could do to running gear. They called me 'The Old Dog', even though I was still a decade or so younger than the grey nomads the magazine was aimed at.

 

When the 4WD magazine decided to film dvds my little green 40 Series Toyota Milo, a truck I'd built from the ground up to handle the roughest bush touring this huge country could throw at it, was suddenly a movie star and I was back on the tracks six months a year.

 

Milo evolved over some fifteen years of constant bush trips, swimming through mud in Tasmania, grinding up dusty tracks in the Kimberley, finding long lost tracks through the Cape and traversing country all points between. In that time the little green truck and I managed some 760,000km and more adventures than you could poke a stick at. We've driven up waterfalls, crossed deserts, ploughed through snow and almost been blown off a west coast beach.

 

Milo's been winched out of quick sand, dragged across log bridges and driven home with her body tied to the chassis with wire. But she always made it home and I guess those trips gave families all over Australia the confidence to get out there and travel this wonderful land. After all, if Roothy could do it in a thirty five year old home made truck, they could do it easily!

 

The dvds had a massive spread across Australia as 4WD Action came to dominate the market. Meanwhile, with three kids at home - all who love camping! - I got used to coming home after a month in a wet canvas bag only to find the camper trailer was packed and pointing at the gate!