Wolf Creek.
If you haven’t seen the movie I’m sure you’ve at least heard of it.
John Jarratt plays a serial killer who picks up campers at Wolf Creek meteorite crater and tortures and murders them. It was based loosely on the real life backpacker murders in NSW and the Peter Falconio case in the Northern Territory.
More frighteningly there was a real serial killer who killed three tourists in the Kimberley and two in the Northern Territory in 1987. But I don’t think they wanted to frighten people away from Wolf Creek completely so they didn’t mention that.
Anyway, I haven’t seen the movie. Nor do I want to,
But I did camp at Wolf Creek meteorite crater. And I can see why you’d set a horror movie there.
It’s eerie.
Not the crater itself, that’s just a big crater. But the surrounding countryside. It’s flat for as far as they eye can see. Not a hill, or a mountain, or a big rock. Nothing. It’s hot, dry, and flat.
Noone to hear you scream.
And a lot of space to bury a body.
The sort of place where you could easily talk yourself into being scared even without the thought of real life serial killers in the back of your mind.
I tell myself I’m not susceptible to thinking about the possibility of serial killers in remote places. If I was I wouldn’t go anywhere. And really, the odds of a serial killer driving 150k down the dirt and corrugations of the Tanami Track, then another 20k out to Wolf Creek are pretty low. But still …. It’s Wolf Creek. There really was a serial killer out here.
The odds of it happening again are pretty low. Not non existent, but pretty low. But there’s always a chance. After all, there are copy cat killers.
But, I’m sure I’m safe.
It was far too hot to hike around the crater in the afternoon, even the lizards were taking shelter. So if I wanted to do that walk I had to camp there. At Wolf Creek. As a woman on my own. At Wolf Creek.
So, of course, I did.
And it was a beautiful place to camp. Big sites, firepits, glorious sunset over the wide open spaces, a million stars. And the possibility of serial killers on the loose
But we won’t think about that.
During the night I heard footsteps around my campsite. Which I always do. After all there are animals around here and a lot of them are more active at night. And they love to come in and see if anybody’s left out any food for them.
But most places don’t have serial killers.
I did have a campfire, which was comforting, But I’ll be honest, once I went to bed it took a little while to fall asleep.
It’s strange. I’ve camped in very remote areas like this before, often completely on my own, and never felt the least bit scared or worried. I don’t know, is it just because the place is called “Wolf Creek”?
But eventually I did fall asleep, and slept like a baby. Well, better than a baby as I didn’t wake up during the night.
And in the morning I watched the sunrise over my campsite and went for a walk around the crater.
It was in fact a magical place.
And not a serial killer to be found. Or at least not one that found me.
