A first aid kit in a camp is not a box. It is a response plan that happens to have a box in it. The box is easy to buy and hard to use. The difference is the twenty minutes before the incident: who knows the sequence, where the signal is, and how the injured person moves.
In Australia the plan bends around one risk in particular. Snake bite is rare and serious, and its first aid is unusual. The useful actions are keeping the person still and getting medical care moving. No cutting, no sucking, no hosepipe tourniquet. A calm, ordered response beats a heroic one every time.
So build the kit backwards, from the response. Write the sequence first: stay, call, bandage, transport. Then stock what the sequence needs, at the quantity a real incident consumes, not the single plaster a shop shelf gives you. Then add the everyday layer: blisters, burns, stings and the fever that appears at 2 am in a cabin.
Last, treat the comms as part of the kit. A bandage without a signal is still just a bandage. On remote trips, the satellite layer and trip intention change the outcome. The medical card in your wallet decides who can act while the emergency is still hours from reporting.
- Groups
- 6 groups, 34 items
- Essentials
- 8 marked do-not-skip
- Rule
- Snake bite: rest, bandage, call 000
- Rule
- Cool a burn for twenty full minutes
- Format
- Tick, download, print for the first aid box
Take the list with you
Downloads as a self-contained HTML file — tick boxes, live Amazon links, and a print layout for saving as PDF or clipping to the visor.
The packing list
Tick items off as you gather them — the boxes reset when you reload, so print this page or keep it open while you pack. Every buyable line links to current options on Amazon AU.
Wound and dressing core
The layer that handles the everyday: cuts, scrapes, blisters and the puncture that gets dirt in it.
Snake, tick and sting layer
Small in the box, first in the plan. The snake bandage is the item this whole kit is weighted toward.
Burns and scalds
Camp runs on fire and fuel. The burn layer is cheap and used far more often than people expect.
Medicines and personal health
The personal layer beats the generic layer. The list in the bag matters as much as the tablets.
Tools and documentation
The items that make assessment possible: light, sight, measurement and a written record.
Emergency and comms layer
The part of the kit that starts before anyone is hurt and finishes after the vehicle is moving.
The snake bite response, in order
Treat a snake bite as a transport problem with a calm first half. Move the group away from the snake, not the person around the camp. Keep the bitten limb still and lower than the heart if that is comfortable. Reassure the person in plain words. Panic burns the energy the wait needs.
Call 000 from wherever you have signal, and send someone if you do not. Do not delay the call to search for the snake. Identification helps hospital treatment but never beats getting the call made. If a safe photo is possible on the way out, take it; otherwise describe colour and size.
Do not wash the bite site, do not cut it, do not suck it and do not apply a hosepipe or belt tourniquet. None of those older methods is in current Australian guidance, and several cause real harm. The venoms that matter most here act slowly enough that stillness and hospital care, not field heroics, decide the outcome.
Then commit to stillness. The person does not walk, carry anything or wave their arms. Carry, wheel or support them to the vehicle, and keep the limb quiet on the drive. Every minute of muscle activity moves more venom along the limb.
Stay, still, bandage, call, transport: five words that hold the whole snake bite response.
The bite can be delayed
Symptoms from some Australian snakes take hours to show. A well person early can deteriorate late, which is why hospital assessment is the rule even when the bite seems fine.
Pressure bandaging, done properly
The pressure immobilisation technique has a specific order. Start over the bite site with a broad elastic bandage, firm like a firmly sprained ankle, not a cut-off limb. Then run the bandage up the whole limb, toe or fingertip to groin or armpit, overlapping half the width each turn.
Splint the limb after bandaging. A rigid splint or padded board stops the muscles working, which is the point. Write the time of the first turn on the bandage itself in pen. The hospital will ask, and the answer changes what they do.
Check the fingers or toes stay warm and pink. The bandage slows venom movement through the lymphatics; it is not meant to stop blood flow. If a limb goes cold, pale or numb, the bandage is too tight for the person, not too tight for the snake.
Know the limits. Current Australian advice applies pressure bandaging to most snake bites, but some bites, particularly those causing severe local damage, are managed differently by some services. For a redback spider bite, a pressure bandage is usually just painful. When unsure, make the call first and follow the operator's instruction.
Bite site first, whole limb next, splint, time written on the bandage, extremities checked warm.
Practice the wrap once
Bandage a willing adult's whole arm in under three minutes at home. The first real attempt under stress is at least twice as slow, and the kit should be sized for that version.
Spiders, jellyfish and the other stings
Funnel-web and pan-web spider bites get the same pressure treatment as snake bites: stillness, bandage, 000. Redback bites are different: the pain is local and a bandage over the site usually adds agony. Cold compresses, relief positioning and a call if symptoms spread beyond the bite are the sensible shape.
In the tropical north, box jellyfish and Irukandji are the serious stingers. Vinegar for thirty seconds after a box jellyfish sting, rescue breathing if needed, and immediate 000 form the protocol carried by patrolled beaches. South of the Tropic, bluebottle pain eases with a seawater rinse and careful removal of tentacle fragments with a card, not a hand.
Bees need scraping out, not pinching, and any swelling far from the sting, hives, wheeze or a swelling tongue is anaphylaxis. That means the adrenaline injector the person carries, if prescribed, then 000 regardless of how good they quickly feel. Ticks get removed at the skin with fine tweezers or a fork, straight and steady, with the attached head watched over the following days.
Bandage snakes and funnel-webs, cool redbacks, vinegar for box jelly, and treat spreading reactions as anaphylaxis.
North of the Tropic changes the kit
Add a vinegar bottle to the beach bag between October and May in the tropical north, and swim patrolled beaches. No first aid kit fixes an unpatrolled waterway.
Burns: twenty minutes and cling film
Cool every burn under running water for twenty full minutes, within the first three hours of the injury. That single discipline does more for pain and depth than any dressing in the box. Use the cleanest water you have, from the five-litre burn container if the tap water has gone cloudy.
No ice, no butter, no ointment under a dressing. Ice deepens tissue injury and creams trap heat. After cooling, cover the burn with cling film laid on, not wrapped tight. The film keeps dressings off and lets staff see the burn at hospital without peeling anything.
Camp burns follow predictable lines. The grill handle, the esky camp oven lid, the lantern flame in canvas and the 3 pm rail all recur. A blister that pops gets cleaned, covered with a non-stick dressing and watched for spreading redness. Large, deep, face or hand burns, or any burn in a child, get medical care the same day.
Twenty minutes of running water beats every burn product in the shop. Cling film laid on, never wrapped.
The burn water is drunk-water until it isn't
Carry the burn container as part of the clean water supply. If it is used, note it and treat that water as gone when planning the next resupply.
Heat, cold and dehydration
Heat illness runs in three steps. First come cramps and heavy sweating, then exhaustion with pale clammy skin. The third step is heatstroke, with confusion and a hot, dry or very red body. That step is a 000 emergency. Cool hard and fast while waiting: shade, removed layers, water application and any breeze the vehicle can drive past.
Prevention is the checklist layer. Water per person per hour of work, shade at the cook site, and the heat of the day given to driving rather than digging. Rehydration salts beat plain water on long hot days, because the salt is what makes the drinking replace what sweat took.
Cold kills the Australian camp less often than heat but arrives from the same two causes: a wet night and a clear inland frost. Shivering that persists after a warm drink and dry clothing needs full attention. Give the group a warm shelter and a foil blanket, and start the drive out early. Hypothermia in a swag in July is real, and the nearest town is the treatment.
Confusion in the heat is a 000 event; persistent shivering in the cold is a drive-out decision.
The kid test
Children overheat faster and ask later. On hot days, check the small ones every hour against the adults: same shade, same water, and more frequent breaks than anyone requests.
Medicines and the personal layer
Pack every personal medicine on its own, with the dosing schedule and the prescriber's name on paper inside the box. A stranger reading your medical history should be able to keep you alive without finding the tablets. This single card does more than any gadget in the shop.
The generic shelf still matters. Carry antihistamines for the reaction that wakes you itching, and salts for the night the water was wrong. Keep pain relief for the headache that glare and long days produce. Child medicine gets dosed by weight, with the card noting both, and it lives in a bag the adults control.
Heat is the enemy in the medicine pouch. Adrenaline injectors, some tablets and most paediatric liquids suffer in a boot that passes fifty degrees. Keep the medical box in the cabin, shaded and out of sun, and replace anything that has cooked, changed shape or passed its date. Drift-expired kits are the most common quiet failure in camping first aid.
One written medical card, dose by weight for kids, and the whole medicine layer kept out of the hot boot.
The adrenaline question
If anyone in the group carries a prescribed adrenaline injector, everyone learns where it lives. The whole crew learns how to use it before the trip, not during the reaction.
Comms, trip intention and extraction
The emergency plan runs on three layers: what calls for help, who knows you are out there, and how the injured person physically moves. Mobile 000 works where there is any carrier signal. A satellite messenger or PLB covers the rest, and on genuinely remote trips it is the first aid itself.
Register the beacon or messenger before the trip, and test it in the season you travel, not the month you bought it. The trip intention form goes to a named person with the route, the return time and the exact call-to-make-if-late instruction. A form left in a windscreen is not a form left with a person.
Plan extraction as a physical problem. Who can lift the person into the vehicle, where does the limb stay straight, and what does the drive look like on the corrugations? The vehicle that cannot self-recover from a soft shoulder delays everyone, including the response. On solo and two-vehicle trips, one working recovery point is part of the medical plan.
Signal, intention and extraction: three links, and the kit is only as strong as the weakest one.
Numbers on the lid
Print 000, Poisons Information on 13 11 26 and your satellite service's number inside the lid. Under stress, nobody remembers a number they have never dialled.
Build the kit, then keep it true
Assemble the kit in labelled pouches: wound, bite, burn, medicines, tools and the comms layer. A trip needing only two pouches still takes the right two. A restock then finds the empty one by its label, not by hope.
Match the pouch set to the trip type. The beach bag gains vinegar and more plasters. The multi-day pack sheds nothing and carries the blister layer heavier. The outback box adds bandage length twice over, extra rehydration salts and the beacon with its own charge.
Then keep it honest. Check dates and drained pouches the night before every trip, and run a full shelf sweep twice a year with the calendar. Anything used gets replaced the same day, because the kit that survives on intentions fails at the next incident. The driveway check is the last link in the response chain.
Pouches by function, restock by calendar, and the rule that anything used is replaced the same day.
Teach the sequence, not the box
Every adult on the trip should be able to narrate the snake bite order without opening anything: still, call, bandage, time, transport. The box is only where the tools wait.
Pouch adjustments by trip type
| Item | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tropical beach, Oct-May | Vinegar bottle and stinger notes added | Box jellyfish season is a first aid plan, not a warning sign |
| Remote 4WD | Double bandage length, extra salts | The nearest hospital is measured in hours, not streets |
| Multi-day hike | Blister layer heavy, splint kept | Feet and limbs are the extraction method on foot |
| Family campsite | Child doses written by weight | Guessing a dose at night is how dosing errors happen |
| Inland winter | Foil blankets and a warm layer each | Clear frost nights drop the sleep system below zero |
| Solo trip | Messenger tested, intention with a person | The comms layer is the whole kit when nobody is with you |
Key terms
- Pressure immobilisation
- A firm broad bandage over a bite site and the whole limb, plus a splint, used to slow venom movement while help is arranged.
- Anaphylaxis
- A whole-body allergic reaction affecting breathing, skin and circulation. Treat with an adrenaline injector if prescribed, then call 000.
- Trip intention
- A written route and return time left with a named person, who raises the alarm if you do not check back.
- Heatstroke
- The severe end of heat illness: core temperature rises, skin is very red or hot, and confusion appears. A 000 emergency while cooling starts.
Pro tips
- ✓Photograph every medicine box and the medical card, and keep the photos in the camera roll. A triage nurse can read your photo at the roadhouse.
- ✓Buy bandages by the limb, not the wound. One snake bite protocol uses three long elastic bandages on an adult leg, and the single-plaster kit is the shop version of the problem.
- ✓Run the driveway drill twice a year: pull the kit, name the pouches, time the arm wrap. The family that has rehearsed answers the operator faster.
Common mistakes
- ✗Washing the bite site or hunting the snake before the 000 call is made, delaying the transport that actually decides the outcome.
- ✗Treating a cool-looking snake bite victim as fine for the night, then driving to town at dawn instead of calling while it is still light.
- ✗Leaving the medicine pouch in the boot all summer, then trusting tablets and an adrenaline injector that have cooked through two trips of fifty degrees.
How we built this list
Compiled from Australian Resuscitation Council first aid guidance, toxins information unit fact sheets on snake and spider bite management, Royal Flying Doctor Service remote preparedness material, and burns first aid guidance. First aid recommendations evolve, and snake bite advice differs between bite types; confirm current protocols before relying on any kit. This article is general information, not medical advice. Links point to Amazon AU search results; prices and product claims are not stated.
Safety note: Any suspected snake bite is a medical emergency: call 000 early, keep the person still and treat the response as a transport problem. Pressure bandaging is not right for every bite or sting, and no cut, suck, ice or tourniquet method is recommended. Seek medical care for bites, burns, head injuries and any reaction that spreads beyond the sting site.
Links to Amazon AU earn us qualifying purchase commissions at no extra cost to you.
Sources reviewed
- Australian Resuscitation Council — first aid guidelines — snake bite response sequence; anaphylaxis and asthma first aid
- TOXICON Clinical Toxinology Resources — snake bite first aid — pressure immobilisation scope; bite type differences
- Royal Flying Doctor Service — remote emergency preparedness — trip intention practice; remote comms options
- State health departments — burns first aid guidance — twenty-minute cooling; cling film coverage
Facts last checked 16 October 2026 · next review due 16 April 2027 · research-based review, no hands-on product testing.
Pair this checklist with
- Best Beach Camping Essentials for Australia — further-reading
- Outback Camping Checklist — see-also
- Family Camping Checklist — see-also
- Solo Camping Checklist — see-also
- Multi-Day Hiking Checklist — see-also
- Camping Checklist Generator Tool — works-with
- Water Needs Calculator Tool — works-with
- Camping in the Central Queensland Climate — further-reading
Track & Canopy may earn a small commission when you buy through the links above — it never changes what makes this list, and prices are set by Amazon, not us.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the snake bite first aid in one line?
- Keep the person still and call 000. Bandage the whole limb firmly from the bite site upward, then splint it and write the time. Get to hospital without the person walking. Do not wash, cut, suck, ice or tourniquet the bite. Current Australian guidance is unusually consistent about that short list, because the effective treatments are stillness and antivenom, not field surgery.
- Should I still pressure-bandage if I cannot identify the snake?
- Yes, and never waste the call hunting a species. Treat every suspected snake bite with the stillness and bandage sequence and let the hospital sort the venom. Some services advise against bandaging when severe local swelling suggests certain southern species. When in doubt, put the question to the emergency operator and follow their answer.
- Are snake bite first aid kits with lancets and suction worth carrying?
- No. The cutting, sucking and constriction methods in older kits appear nowhere in current Australian guidance, and the tight tourniquet style has caused real limb damage. Spend the same money on long elastic bandages, a splint and a satellite layer. The kit that matches the protocol beats the kit that matches the mythology.
- What goes in a first aid kit for remote outback trips beyond the standard box?
- Three extras define the remote kit. Double the bandage and dressing supply, because resupply is hours away and an incident empties a small kit in minutes. Add a registered PLB or satellite messenger, tested that season. Then carry written medical information for every person, with doses by weight for children, in a sealed bag that stays with the driver.
- Is a satellite messenger enough, or do I need a PLB?
- They answer different questions. A messenger lets you describe the problem, request non-urgent help and check in, which prevents most false alarms. A PLB is a distress beacon with a satellite service and needs registration. Close to vehicle tracks with a two-way radio, one device is fine. Deep remote travel increasingly sees people carry a messenger plus a registered beacon for the worst day.
- How do I store medicines in a hot vehicle?
- In the cabin, shaded, never in the boot or on the dash. Most tablets degrade in sustained heat, liquids spoil faster, and adrenaline injectors carry explicit temperature limits on the box. Take the medical pouch on hikes rather than locking it in the car. Replace anything whose packaging has softened, discoloured or passed its date.
- My child has a fever in a remote camp at 2 am. What is the plan?
- Treat the comfort and the fluids first: weight-dosed paracetamol or ibuprofen, shade, water and rehydration salts, and light clothing. Watch the markers that decide transport: breathing effort, stiff neck, a rash that does not blanch, confusion, or a child too listless to drink. Any of those means the drive or the call happens now, not at dawn. A fever alone, in a drinking responsive child, is a monitor-and-manage night.
- How often should the camp first aid kit be checked?
- Every trip, the night before: open the pouches, count what was borrowed and check the seal on anything sterile. Then a calendar sweep twice a year for dates, dressings that have dried out and gloves that have become sticky. Restock anything used the same day, because the next incident does not wait for the shopping list.