Karl can find delight and scientific insight in the strangest places - such as behind the wheel of a huge four-wheel drive.

That's a place he's spent a bit of time, because every year or so Karl fixes up the 4WD, piles in the family and any other unfortunates he can round up, and heads out into the desert. It's no ordinary bush-bash, though; with Karl at the helm, life is never dull.

August 2001
Corrugated Roads Part 3	The only thing Karl loves more than homework is having his fans do it for him! In this Karl Trek, the good doctor pulls together some mighty theories and experimental evidence gathered by die-hard investigators of corrugated roads. Will the dust ever settle on this question?
July 2001
Corrugated Roads Part 2	Any time you hit a dirt road, you hit corrugations. And you ask, "How did they get here?" In part 2 of his expose on road corrugations, Karl is still not ready to reveal all, but he's got a couple of good theories.
June 2001
Corrugated Roads Revisited	You can't keep a man with a 4WD and a bumpy road down, apparently. Join Dr Karl as he revisits his explanation of corrugations from circa 1994 - and hold on tight.
March 2001
Trains	Karl reminisces about the role of trains and public transport - and the odd conspiracy story - on an overnight rail trip with his family.
March 2001
Simpson Desert	Karl once crossed the Simpson Desert with the then-head of NASA in Australia. Karl drove a diesel Landcruiser, while the NASA head drove a petrol Landcruiser.
October 2000
Fog	Karl once lead a line of cars astray as they followed his high powered fog lights through thick fog.
September 2000
Tyre Siping	When Karl was a young hippy, he headed off in his 1959 Pontiac with plenty of spare retreads and had a "tyre-awareness" experience. Cool, man.
June 2000
Cooked Engines & Hot Fairlane 2	Karl nurses an old Fairlane back to near-perfection and then gives it to his Dearly Beloved Brother-in-Law, a known engine-cooker.
May 2000
Cooked Engines & Hot Fairlane	Do not overheat your engine. If your engine is overheating, stop the car. No questions. Stop the car. Dr Karl tells us his story and what may be involved when something's cooking under the hood.
March 2000
Travel	A trip away can give perspective to our often myopic view of life. For Karl, a family holiday to NZ was one of those trips.
February 2000
Metal Fatigue	The Young Dr. Karl was an expert on metal fatigue. From testing the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne (which collapsed in the 70's) he's moved to helping out a stranded couple with a broken tie rod on their FJ 55.
January 2000
Antimatter	Forget diesel, antimatter is the ultimate 4WD fuel. With a few grams of high grade antimatter under your bonnet, the solar system is your 'Outback'.
December 1999
Noise	Karl collects concrete evidence that cities are noisy places. Along the way he explores anti-noise technology and how it reduces the amount of noise your ears hear - it's all to do with mountains and valleys.
November 1999
Air Conditioning	Dr Karl turns down an offer of free air conditioning for his trip into Cape York country.
October 1999
Rabbits - Part 3	Bunnies are not only good breeders - they're also pretty talented at evolving, which explains why they're so hard to eradicate. Myxomatosis dented the rabbit population in the 1950s but the humble bunny has made a big come-back since then.
September 1999
Rabbits - Part 2	Most Australians think that rabbits are a bad thing, but there are many countries around the world who love their bunnies.
September 1999
Rabbits - Part 1	Karl likes eating rabbits, but he hates running them over. But where do all those pesky bunnies come from? And how many does it take to make an Akubra hat? Karl says we can solve Australia's rabbit problem, if we all use our heads.
August 1999
4WD in NZ	A freak snowstorm means Karl has to learn to drive on ice and snow across New Zealand's South Island.
July 1999
Hot Oil - part 2	When you're racing across a beach with the tide coming in and your oil temperature starts to max out, what do you do? If you're Karl, you have faith in your obsessive nature, rely on the enormous oil-cooler you've fitted and keep on truckin'.
June 1999
Hot Oil - part 1	New born babies are better at coping with extreme heat than engines. That's possibly because babies don't have lubricating oil in their veins. Karl meets a man who pushes his luck with lube jobs a bit too far...
May 1999
Why Trees are Green	Meet an ancient bacteria that lives in Australia's salt lakes and could hold the secret about why trees are green.
April 1999
Nukes, Whales and Diffs	Sperm Whales were once killed to produce an oil that is so good, it's considered essential for the production of nuclear weapons.
January 1999
Dieback2	A sneaky disease is wreaking havoc in the Australian bush. It's called dieback and is caused by a microscopic dirt fungus called Phytophthora cinnamomi. And some of the worst carriers are 4WDers and bushwalkers who don't clean their boots...
2000 kilowatts a square metre	Bushfires generate enormous power and are one of the life forces of the Australian bush. In fact, many native trees are perfectly adapted to regular burning and rely on the fires for sex.
December 1998
Tiny Aboriginal Children	Widespread malnutrition amongst the Aboriginal children of central Australia often stunts their growth. Yet many of Australia's first people still have amazing vision, despite horrific rates of blindness.
November 1998
Whirlwinds, seafood showers and flying saucer nests	They're a force of nature as uncontrollable as a thunderstorm. They'll wrap you in clouds of dust and make you bless your up-market air filtration system; They dump living seafood 80 kilometres inland and make flying saucer nests. They're whirlwinds, and you've probably been inside one.
October 1998
The Mantle of Safety	A mobile HF (Flying Doctor) Radio is more than The School of the Air, a medical service, a link between friends and family, a radio-phone, and entertainment. It's insurance.
September 1998
Talc Alf	In the outback past Maree, Karl and his family bump into Talc Alf, at the phone booth, a long time resident with his own theories on the evolution of written language.
August 1998
Kangaroo Island Part 1	Karl and his family take a trip to Kangaroo Island in South Australia... home to dopey tame wildlife, friendly locals and fascinating historical tipbits.
May 1998
Gauges Part 1	Karl proclaims his love for gauges and all they do, tracing some of their history and gives some tips on what to look for in a good gauge.
Gauges Part 2	Karl's self-indulgent rave on the beauty of gauges continues, he describes his own favourites and how they make it easier to diagnose his 4WD's internal sicknesses.
Flat Tyre	A flat tyre triggers a near-death experience in Karl's 4WD: "In a very smooth and untroubled motion, the back of the truck caught up with the front. So now we were travelling along the road sideways, at 90 degrees to our original (and highly desired) direction."
March 1998
Crash Tests and Murphy's Law	In a voice like thunder Murphy proclaimed, "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way".
February 1998
Nuts and Bolts - Part 3	A wise mechanic once taught me the right way to install self-tapping screws. The wrong way is to be neat and drill a slightly-undersized hole. The right way is to punch a hole in the metal.
Oil - Part 3	Doctors analyse blood all the time. You too can play doctor with the oil in your engine. But, just like a doctor, you need more than the chemical numbers.
January 1998
Nuts and Bolts - Part 2	A wise mechanic once taught me that small bolts are overtorqued (and break), and big bolts are undertorqued. She put it down to "human nature", i.e., complete irrationality.
Lead - Part 3	There is no doubt that most of the lead in the brains of children who live in cities around the world comes from petrol.
Oil - Part 2	But modern engines make oil work harder. Less oil in the sump means a lighter engine, but the oil has less reserve capacity.
December 1997
Nuts and Bolts - Part 1	Fasteners cover everything from nails to rivets and bolts. A phone is held together with about 75 fasteners, a car with 3,500, and a jet plane with 1,500,000.
Lead - Part 2	But in the 1920s, tetraethyl lead was a wonderful invention. When your spark plug fires, it ignites a flame front which travels through the combustion chamber, burning the petrol:air mixture.
Oil - Part 1	A cold start can also be a dirty start, because of the oil pressure-release valve in your oil filter. If the oil pressure is too high, this valve opens, and unfiltered oil enters the oil circuit of your engine.
November 1997
Lead - Part 1	I refuse to believe that unleaded petrol is as useless as a pub with no beer...
Salt	Salt is the stuff that makes fresh, perfectly-cooked chips taste so good. It's also the very stuff of life.
Dung Beetle - Part 2	The Egyptians worshipped the dung beetle. They saw a strong similarity between the Sun rolling across the sky each day, and the dung beetle rolling the little balls of dung across the ground.
October 1997
Magnetic Turtles and the GPS	It turns out that some sea turtles have both a compass and a map locked in their brains.
Dung Beetle - Part 1	"Thanks to dung beetles, the enormous numbers of cattle dung pats (also called cattle droppings, or cattle poo) in Australia are steadily being reduced."
Hydrogen Cars	"The trouble with today's cars is that they still put out a lot of pollution, and use up fossil fuels."
Diff Locks	"The first time I fell in love with the twin diff locks on my C304 was when I and 20 motorists got bogged on a bitumen road."
September 1997
Water and Death	Karl examines what you should do if your car breaks down in the outback.
Solar Roads	"If we wanted to run Oz on solar cells, all we have to do is cover all the bitumen/concrete roads with solar cells."
Tsumani	They're the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the ocean waves, they can move as fast as a jumbo jet, they're probably behind the legend of the lost civilisation of Atlantis, and they've killed a few hundred thousand people in the last few centuries.
Karumba Tides	When you travel around the coastline of Northern Australia, you soon notice something odd about the tides.
August 1997
Tumbleweed	According to the American movies, tumbleweed is as American as apple pie. But tumbleweed is not a native American. It's a Russian invader, that was first discovered in Australia.
Stars at Night	"If you're in the Australian Outback at night, you'll notice two things about the night sky - it's very big, and it's full of stars. Usually, looking at the stars is fun, but on one occasion, we put our lives at risk!"
Balloon Launch Part 1 Part 2	"On our 5th Triumphal Tour of Australia (TToA/5), we were lucky enough to see the launch of a scientific balloon."
Corrugations Part 1 Part 2	It doesn't matter if roads are paved or unpaved, they can all get corrugations.
Magnetic Bees	Each honeybee hive produces about 29 kg of honey per year. To help them make this honey, the bees talk to each other - and just recently, some scientists have learnt to speak this language!
Tea Scum	As tea became more popular, fervent tea-drinkers worried about tea scum floating on the top - that thin almost-invisible film, which after a few minutes becomes brown-coloured, and then discolours the sides of cups, spoons and even your teeth.
July 1997
Magnetic Turtles and the GPS	The GPS relies on some 20-or-so satellites in orbit broadcasting accurate time-and-position signals. But there's a very odd thing about the GPS. It sends accurate signals to the 'enemy' in war-time, but inaccurate signals in peace-time - which is the complete opposite of what was intended!
Air In and Out	"When I 'improved' my Volvo C304 for outback travel, one big problem was how to process the air that was sucked into the engine, and then pushed out."
Fire Fighting Foam	"In all my years of driving, I've had a few cars catch on fire!"
Family 4WD-ing	Karl reveals that the real reason that he got into 4WD-ing was so that he could spend more time with his family.
Australian meteor craters	On the 18th of January,1991, our planet nearly got walloped by a small missile of rock about ten metres across, a mini-asteroid.
Bacteria mine gold!	One trouble with mining is that it's a dirty and risky business. Hundreds of lives are lost each year digging for minerals, so wouldn't it be great if we could get another life form to do it for us? Well, it turns out that bacteria have been doing that for a long time.
... and bacteria make gold!	Now some scientists believe that bacteria might have actually laid down some of the gold deposits in the first place.
Motorbike across the Canning	"When we were at the Three Ways Roadhouse in the Gulf of Carpenteria having a feed last September, I ran into a bloke who rode a motorbike along the full length of the Canning - and the only reason that he survived, was because he had a rule that he wouldn't go to sleep until he had a wee."

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