Opinion: can we take the Dakar to Australia now?

Now that the 45th Dakar Rally is over, the deserts are quiet and the damage to man and machinery has been assessed, we’re now left with little to do but think about the next one. And our abiding thought, along with ‘Well, that was one for the ages’ and ‘Yep, they’re all still completely mad’ was actually one of geography.

No question, the Arabian Desert served up some serious surprises and obstacles to surmount, from endless (and largely unpredictable) dunes to flash floods. And for two out of three entrants to actually finish feels like a particularly Dakar-appropriate attrition rate. But we’re wondering: now that the Dakar Rally is something of a travelling circus, why not bring it to the great southern land?

After all, Australia has all the ingredients needed for a particularly excellent Dakar Rally. You want desert? How about one million square miles of it? Yes, that’s 1,000,000 square miles – more than 10 times the size of the United Kingdom – just of desert. And that’s just the actual desert; there’s another million or so square miles of may-as-well-be desert to play around in as well.

But it’s more than just desert to the Dakar, right? Any decent Dakar needs technical rocky sections and endless sands, imperilling isolation and merciless elements. And it should really finish with a beach stage, as per the original Dakar.

Well, Australia has the entire Sturt Stony Desert, if that helps. And about 110,000 square miles of Great Sandy Desert. Too much, you say? No worries – just use the Little Sandy Desert. OK, so it’s the size of Portugal, but that’s fine, right?

As for isolation, merciless elements and coast... well. Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world, where two out of three Australians live in one of the eight capital cities – seven of which are on the coast. And on the subject of coasts, about nine out of ten Australians live within 35 miles of the ocean.

And there’s a very good reason for that – the middle of Australia rivals Stranger Things’ Upside Down for hospitability to humanity. Never mind all the animals that can punch your ticket (after all, what’s a death adder or two among friends?) when the deserts themselves can top 50 degrees Celsius, sit in the driest inhabited continent in the world, and are each the size of a European country.

In terms of a coast for the rally to finish on... well, it’s Australia, isn’t it? This is the country where there’s a strip of coastline called Eighty Mile Beach. Which is 136 miles long. They’re probably sorted for one to drive on.

In fact, we’d suggest that the Dakar is probably sorted, full stop. Australia is so large and inhospitable that there’s a good chance they’d never have to run the same route twice until the rapture came and went. Which the competitors would likely fail to notice, given they’re already driving through purgatory.

So here’s our pitch, in a nutshell: the centre of Australia is pretty much the last place we’d ever want to be stranded and alone. Speaking objectively, it’s a place of extreme climate, scarcity and geographical isolation. Speaking subjectively, it’s a terrible place for a human being to find themselves. Which makes it the perfect place to hold the Dakar Rally.