Meet the River Rats: South Australia’s Outback Drifters

In our latest series, Australiana, VICE is exploring national identity beyond the stereotypes. There are no cork hats or shrimps on the barbie here, we're letting Australians tell their own stories, free of national myth or propaganda.

About two and a half hours north of Adelaide is the Riverland. It's a sprawl of irrigated vineyards and citrus that follows the Murray River as it cuts west through mallee and sand. The region is basically desert, river, sun, and not much else—except for the River Rats, a motley bunch of down-and-out guys who've made their homes in caravans and half-dead houseboats along the river. In the nearby towns of Renmark and Berri, the Rats inspire a mix of fear and annoyance. Sometimes the police will try and flush them out. But they always come back.

"I'd say there's always between 70 and 150 people in the area," explains David Beaton, CEO of Berri Barmera Council. "Some of their camps are as small as two, some are much bigger, but they've been here for as long as I can remember. And I first worked here in 1982."

David says the Rats are mostly homeless people who hitch into the area to pick fruit and get stuck there. A few are just recluses who enjoy the lifestyle. "A lot of them feel they've got a degree of freedom living here," he says. "They don't have landlords or bosses. They can do what they want."

I tried to push David on the darker side of this ungovernable freedom. The fact it's not rare for bodies of former Rats to be pulled out of the river. But he seemed non-plussed. "We last had a case like that about 18 months ago," he says. "I can't remember the exact details."

For me though, it's this part of the Rats' story that I keep coming back to. I spent some of my early teens in Renmark, where stories from their camps became local gossip. I remember one time when the police disbanded the Rats after a guy killed his mate with a shovel. Locals brushed it off as some skirmish between bums, one that was pretty typical of the Rats' particular code of tribal justice. But it also seemed like an insight into a strange and wild scene, and I kept thinking about it.

I kept thinking about it to the point where, some 17 years after moving away, I decided to drive back. I wanted to talk with some River Rats to find out who they were, and what their world looks like from the inside.

I started, of course, at the pub. A few locals knew of a camp on the floodplains outside Paringa, which is how I found this place. It was an old double decker bus, bolted to a kind of annex, and spray painted with lots of "keep outs." No one was home, so I poked around and took some fairly invasive photos.

Here's a photo of the inside. The seats had all been stripped out and replaced with a carpeted floor and a pile of mattresses at one end. On the right, out of frame, stood a wood fire stove.

Behind the bus stood an old fibro hut. Unlike the bus, this had been comprehensively trashed and filled with graffiti. Newspaper stories rarely mention the crossover between white poverty and Indigenous inequality, but looking around it was clear. All the tags about Black Power and Wu-Tang seemed to say that local Aboriginal people frequent the same camps.

At another pub I was told to head to the old Berri rodeo grounds. The arena had been torn down, the locals said, but I'd find some campers nearby. And sure enough I found a strip of tents and caravans wedged between the ruins and the river. Nearby I saw this guy, and we got talking via some universal "dog chat." He introduced himself as Ashley.

"We're not bad people," he said, jabbing a thumb at the camp. "Some of us are addicts, or we can't work. But most us just want to get away from the rat race. That's me, I just wanted to get away from the bullshit."

Ashley told me he'd been there since 2013. He originally worked as an engineer in Queensland and fell for a girl half his age, then followed her south to pick fruit. They broke up not long after, then Ashley got fired after punching his manager, and a week after that he had a mental breakdown.

"I came here to get well," he said. "There's a calming spirit to the land, but it's also the dogs. I tried to gas myself in the van once. I had it all connected and I was just going to sleep when I heard this yelp outside like [my dog] had been bitten. Well, I care about her more than myself, so I opened the door to see what was going on and she just jumped on my lap and wouldn't get off.

"So that's it, I decided I'd stick around for the dogs."

Ashley showed me around his caravan, pointing out the veggie garden, and his inflatable pool yabbie pond. It was all pretty orderly and out of line with the filthy, murderous image I'd envisaged. So I asked him about River Rat murders, and he paused thoughtfully. "I know of three people who have gone in the river since I got here," Ashley replied, slowly. "One was a drug dealer who was ripping off his customers. Another was stealing stuff from other camps, the third was some personal matter—but they all broke the rules." I asked him about "the rules" and he explained the form of DIY bush justice I'd suspected—that loyalty is king, above all else. "Everyone in the camp looks out for each other," Ashley said. "If someone needs help you help them. But if they turn your back on you, or they steal, then they need to be shown. Everyone here knows the rules."

On the whole, Ashley seemed like a sweet guy who'd gone through some shit. As he talked, he jumped between extolling the benefits of openingly talking about feelings, and then onto descriptions of brutal fights. And then he'd circle back to praising the council and various welfare agencies, all of which he described as "life savers."

Without knowing a thing about the psychology of homelessness, I'd say Ashley represented a fairly textbook vision. But most interesting was the way he insisted the Rats' unifying philosophy wasn't anything like that approaching a gang. "We're just here because it's sunny and there's space to be alone," he said. "If you're homeless would you rather live in a gutter, or out here by the river?" After that he put his finger to his lips and told me and the dogs to shhhhhhh. I could hear wind, and bees. That was all. And Ashley grinned like he'd proven his point. Follow Julian on Twitter and Instagram