12-year-old boy caught trying to drive across Australia after making it a third of the way

A 12-year-old boy attempting to drive the entire distance of Australia on his own has been stopped by police, some 1,300 kilometres into his journey.

The young boy was pulled over in Broken Hill, an isolated mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, on Saturday after appearing to have driven across a third of the country.

He appears to have driven across the whole state of NSW, starting in Kendall near Port Macquarie.

A police spokesperson said he was on his way to Perth in a statement released on Sunday.

“Checks revealed the driver to be a 12-year-old boy travelling from Kendall NSW on his way to Perth,” the spokesperson told Associated Press.

Local highway patrol officers stopped the young boy’s car at around 11am on Saturday when they saw its bumper dragging along the ground.

The 12-year-old was then arrested and taken to Broken Hill police station. Inquiries are ongoing.

The journey from Kendall to Perth by car takes about 40 hours and involves going across some of the harshest deserts in Australia, including the Nullarbor Plain.

The country’s official tourism site advises visitors to take six days solely to get across the Nullarbor on an infamous highway which goes through barren scrubland. It recommends drivers to “carry extra petrol and plenty of water and food”.