The idea of living a nomadic, off-grid lifestyle where you hunt and forage for food when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired and wake up with the sunrise might seem like a life full of freedom and clarity.

But the reality is far less romantic. Leaving your modern world behind could pull into question your very identity, probably involve eating a lot of roadkill and definitely require a tonne of paperwork.

So, if you could muster up the courage to quit your job and venture off into the wilderness, Christopher McCandless style, there are a few logistical matters you'd need to tackle first.

Like where will you live? The law makes this tricky

Australia has a LOT of untouched land. It's one of five countries — among Russia, the United States, Canada and Brazil — that holds more than 70 per cent of the world's remaining wilderness.

But while Australia still has some untouched land, its version of wilderness is largely unforgiving terrain where someone might not survive very long.

While Australia contains a large wilderness area, it's mostly inhospitable terrain. ( Nature, International Journal of Science )

Evan Hamman, a property and environmental law lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, said Australia had no "unregulated wild land" because of the tenure system it inherited from England which dictates land is either privately or state-owned.

So if you wanted to live off the grid, you would need the permission of whoever's land you were on.

One way around this would be to do what Claire Dunn did and take a year off to live in the bush as part of a program. You'd have land and an instant community to show you the ropes.

Without the landowner's permission, you could open yourself up to the threat of a civil action from the landholder or, if it's state land, a state-based punishment, probably in the form of a fine.

Claire Dunn gave up her creature comforts for a year to live in the bush. An experience she wrote a book about. ( Supplied: Australian Geographic )

Dr Hamman flagged other tenures including reserves, national parks, mining leases and petroleum leases (CSG), and Native Title — which is something different altogether.

"Anything without a formal title is generally referred to as unallocated state land. In other words, there is nothing 'wild' according to the law," he said.

If you manage to sort a location, there's then a separate set of laws concerned with taking or interfering with plants and animals, because all native flora and fauna is also owned by the state.

"Most states and territories have similar provisions in their laws," Dr Hamman said. "Killing a kangaroo for subsistence, for example, would be a crime. The same with taking edible plants. Technically you would need permits to take these things."

And that brings us to the next point…

Paperwork. Lots of paperwork

Once you have approval to live on the land, you then need to apply for a number of other approvals, mostly from the state or territory government, to access natural resources.

Legally, the general rule is that natural resources are "owned" by the state, so taking any water, species or vegetation without approval is a crime punishable by fine and, in some rare cases, imprisonment.

This was the case in 2010 when a Queensland woman was fined $40,000 and narrowly escaped jail for repeatedly feeding and playing with dingoes on Queensland's Fraser Island.

If you gain permission, don't expect you'll then be able to pick up a weapon and hunt, or trap animals for food. Again, this requires a lot of paperwork.

In most states, if you're on private land, you can kill feral animals like cats, pigs and goats, but for game hunting you need a general standard hunting licence, plus written permission from the landowner.

But in some states, like New South Wales, there are state forests declared as public hunting lands, for which you need a Restricted Game Hunting Licence (R-Licence).

Once you have that you'd need to sit through a 45-minute to one-hour accreditation course covering the use of firearms, bow and arrow, hunting dogs, black powder, or all of the above.

You'd also have to be a member of a hunting organisation.

And from there you can book into a forest hunting site online, kind of like a hotel, with each particular hunting site carrying its own rules.

So, all of this and we haven't even touched on the specific licensing needed for weaponry like guns, bows or dogs.

But Dr Hamman said, as with all laws, they need to be monitored and enforced.

"I'd imagine someone could live for some time 'off the grid' by foraging for edible berries and plants and killing and cooking the odd animal, provided they have access to running water without anyone knowing they are there," he said.

You could always take advantage of roadkill

Forget hunting permits, roadkill is fair game. Just make sure it's fresh enough. ( ABC News: David Hudspeth )

If you don't have the patience for paperwork, you could always take a leaf out of Ms Dunn's book.

While she mostly ate foods like lentils, legumes, rice and oats during her year in the bush, she frequently dined on a hot meal of roadkill which was any animal that had been dead for less than 12 hours.

Those tasty morsels included snakes, goannas, wallabies and a flying fox (a dark red, gamey meat that "tastes pretty good, actually").

But the hard part came when Ms Dunn made her first kill. With the relevant permissions, she set a snare with the intention of trapping a wallaby.

"I don't think I actually expected I'd catch anything," she said. "So when I found the wallaby dead, I had to walk about 2 kilometres back to camp with it in my arms and I just cried the whole way.

"And then we honoured its body in every way. We used every part of its body, including the hide, so it was a deeply appreciated wallaby."

While it prompted a few existential questions, Claire Dunn said she felt the most alive living in the bush. ( Supplied: Australian Geographic )

One of the hardest parts…

Aside from unrelenting mosquitoes, Ms Dunn said the biggest challenge came with being stripped bare of the structure to her days and having nothing to mirror back her social identity.

"Facing the question of 'who am I' without my job to go to, and without all those ways of being busy that distract us from what's really happening," she said.

"Without those distractions, you're just confronted with yourself, day to day, which of course can be challenging."

But that challenge was superseded by the shock of transition from the freedom of the wild to living within four walls again.

"It felt like such a diminishment of aliveness," Ms Dunn said.

"It's been a long adjustment actually."

So, is it worth it?

If you can wrangle the legalities, Ms Dunn said it's definitely worth it … with one caveat.