This silly pastime is one of the underrated joys of road trips

When you’re halfway into the 700-kilometre drive through the South Australian outback from the Flinders Ranges to Coober Pedy, it’s pretty obvious that “I Spy” isn’t going to cut it.

Thus, on the parched infinity of the Stuart Highway, the sport of Caravan v Road Train is born.

Trucks and road trains in Coober Pedy.Credit: iStock

The rules of the game are pretty simple. Everyone has to guess what the next vehicle coming the other way will be. If you correctly guess a car, it’s one point. But it’s two points for a correctly guessed caravan and three for a road train. Most points in the next hour wins, and it’s all about strategy – gamble on the higher scoring bigger vehicles or play slow and steady opting for cars?

One of the underrated joys of road trips is coming up with silly little games to keep yourself entertained. Every family does it at some point, and the games – never played with anyone else, and seemingly ludicrous to outsiders – become part of the bonding experience. Kids grow up playing half a dozen alternatives to I Spy that none of their friends understand. They’re also met with baffled stares when they grow up and try to involve their new boyfriend or girlfriend in 20 Red Things or Roadside Alphabet.

Different settings deserve different boredom-busters. On rural drives, for example, there’s nothing like a good game of Cow v Sheep. This divides the car into two, looking for wildlife on either side. If the next animal seen on the left is better than the next animal seen on the right, then the passenger side wins. Obviously, a cow beats a sheep, you need at least a horse to beat a cow, and everyone is very annoyed when they see a pigeon.

Credit: Jamie Brown

Sometimes, these sorts of games take on a new life. No More Jockeys, a game created by comedians Alex Horne, Tim Key and Mark Watson, became a surprise hit Youtube series. The premise – say a celebrity name, and introduce a rule that all subsequent famous names must meet – is deceptively simple. Ten minutes in, when rules state there are no more politicians, no more first names and surnames with the same number of letters and no more people with fruit in their name, it gets infuriatingly complex.

But most of the time, it’s just your thing. And a fiercely competitive thing at that. When my wife and I play Radio Rugby, we end up calling each other every name under the sun. What should be an enjoyable listen to songs on the radio becomes a tense shoot-out.

The aim is to be the first person to say the artist and song title of whatever’s playing – but it has to be done before the DJ says either or the title comes up in the lyrics. You can also score a “conversion” by naming another song by the artist.

This leads to some ridiculous pedantry over whether Valerie was by Amy Winehouse or Mark Ronson (though originally written and performed by the Zutons) and why Tina Turner never released a song called Simply The Best.

It also leads to outrageously bold guesses – sometimes based on the first note of the song – and some humiliatingly bad wrong answers. By the way, Are You Gonna Be My Girl? by Jet has a very similar intro to Lust For Life by Iggy Pop and Phil Collins’ version ofYou Can’t Hurry Love.

The roster of silly car games changes with time, and later in life there comes a lovely moment when your children are old enough to invent their own.

A few weeks ago, I got told off in a way that was utterly delightful. “Daddy – you need to look out for an orange car,” came the indignant cry from the back seat. “We’re playing Rainbow Cars.”