End of the line for a humble Jayco

THE ingrained red dust and heart-wrenching inscriptions tell the story of a much loved and well travelled caravan.

But the sad remains of this grand old lady of the road serve as a reminder that not all roads are suitable for some caravans.

And so it was for this once gleaming Jayco camper trailer which now lies abandoned on a desolate, dusty and corrugated road off the Central Arnhem Road, about 460km from the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory's wilderness.

There's no doubt the old girl travelled proudly along the highways and byways of this great land of ours ... but she was no match for the rigours of harsh and unforgiving outback roads.

And when she finally gave up the ghost while being hauled through terrain far from civilisation and far more suited to Bushtrackers than a humble Jayco, her owners sadly uncoupled her for the last time. But they couldn't leave with paying homage to their friend, scrawling messages of goodbye on her aluminium cladding.

We'll probably never know what exactly happened, but inscriptions on the sorry looking caravan – now a welcome home for snakes and other creatures – reveal that her owners certainly got value out of the old girl.

"We got our money's worth." they wrote in indelible pen on the sides of their friend. "R.I.P. beloved caravan 1980-2009," they added in another tribute.

That the Jayco lasted the best part of 30 years before leaving for that great caravan paradise in the sky is some kind of testament to either the manufacturer or the loving care bestowed on it by the owners.

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