West of the South East

We were traveling along a back road off the Pacific Highway looking for somewhere to camp. After three straight days driving our spirits were scraping the asphalt. The night before had been spent shivering on a gravelly embankment with wet tents and no fire after getting lost on the way to a national park (never trust Google Maps in rural Australia). No one was admitting it yet but the possibility we were lost again was getting very real.
I distracted myself from the tension by staring out the window and philosophizing about why the subtropical foliage of central New South Wales was always a lighter green than the Victorian stuff I was used to.
Suddenly I caught a glimpse of what every road traveler dreads: a ute, twisted and mangled down the bottom of a hill. It was just a glimpse but I knew what I'd seen.
We hurled our van into the closest pit stop, called an ambulance and hurried to the accident. None of us knew first aid but pacing around in the dirt seemed harder to deal with than what might be waiting down the hill.
As we ran down the road a strange calm set in; a kind of total resignation to experiencing something horrible. As soon as we were in view my friend started cackling like a nervous idiot. I cancelled the ambulance with a meek, breathless apology. From the top of the hill it was obvious the ute had been there for years, maybe decades. It was all gaping rust holes and overgrown bracken, like it'd been purposefully left there as some kind of morbid warning. Something horrible had happened. But it was the distant kind of horrible that makes you laugh like a nervous idiot.
We headed back to the van still shaking.On the way we happened upon an unmarked dirt road. We knew the beach was close so we took a chance on it. It led to a stretch of coast so wide and empty it looked undiscovered. We camped there a night and day, burning driftwood and pretending we were last people on Earth. Roadside goodwill, even false alarms, can pay off in the strangest way.