Family's 'foul' caravan photo reveals truth about life on Aussie roads

It looks like the picture perfect life on Instagram, but behind every sunset and scenic shot of Australia's outback lies at least one dirty little secret.

More and more Aussies are taking to the wide open road as domestic nomads fill up their 4WD and travel state to state, with plenty of families posting their seemingly idyllic lives on social media. Yet a newly acclaimed 'van life' mum has revealed the "less than glamorous" task which now haunts her to-do list.

After three months on the road, Sydney woman Brooke Goosen finally had to face the dreaded "glowing red light" above the toilet in her caravan as her partner, who usually carries out the task of emptying it, was unavailable.

With the toilet full of her family's waste she was forced to take it "for a walk" and dispose of the contents into a designated 'dumping point' at a Byron Bay campsite — with her mum capturing the smelly moment in all its glory.

"It was just foul. It's a hole in the ground and you basically have to tip your waste into it and if you don't get it in the hole it splashes everywhere. It's really disgusting," Brooke recalled to Yahoo News.

In the picture Brooke can be seen screwing up her face in disgust as she pours her family's waste into the hole, leaning as far back as possible while wearing gloves.

"Is it just me or is the idea of the dump points outdated?" she said, sharing the experience online. "If we're getting rockets into space surely there's a better way."

Caravan toilet needs emptying every two days

Brooke explained the cassette toilet only stores the family of five's waste for about two days. In a rather dismayed tone, she recounted how she has even faced a few overflow accidents after her kids didn't notice the "red light" warning.

"The red light on top of the toilet means it's either full or you have to take it within the next couple of goes, if you don't it overflows," she explained. "We had a going away party in March and all our friends had no idea about the red light... it wasn't fun."

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In the US connection pipes are a common solution for this, meaning travellers don't need to manually dump waste like Brooke and her family do. Instead a pipe connects the caravan waste container to a campsite dumping point and saves travellers getting their hands messy.

After sharing the image online one referred to the cassette toilet as the "devil's suitcase" while others urged Brooke to instead switch to a compost toilet, which seperates liquids and solids and doesn't require dumping.

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