Stories of the road…
Trashy backpacker travellers create a crisis for free campers
As the backpacker and fruit picking industries floods places with visitors, irresponsible travellers camping in vans in popular places make it hard for all. FIRST PUBLISHED: May 8, 2019
DAY USE only. No camping. The sign is specific.
Its message is similar to others I have seen near popular holiday locations. Why it is there has something to do with the growing number of people choosing to live or to spend time travelling in vehicles and vans. It also has a lot to do with a particular form of industrial tourism and, allegedly, with the agriculture industry—farming and orcharding.
Creeping closures
When I lived in Byron Bay I would encounter van-travelers in the carpark at the beach end of town or over in the Clarks Beach carpark. Their vehicles ranged from the classic 1960s Kombi to the converted Toyota Coaster to the minimalism of a Ford Econovan and other types. They would be there for only the daylight hours because Byron Council has a habit of moving people along. You can’t overnight on council land no matter how tired you are. In this town where the touristy surface glosses over a poverty that sits uncomfortably alongside wealth, there is no alternative to paying for commercial accommodation. The council has a ban on sleeping in vehicles that applies even during the day.
Byron Council’s regulation makes sense in terms of public sanitation and preventing the town’s beachside carparks becoming the domain of motorised itinerants. It was that which stimulated the City of Sydney into action when local people complained about backpackers living in vehicles outside backpacker hostels on Victoria Street in Potts Point, and about their littering and urinating in the gutter. That mini-controversy highlighted how irresponsible vehicle-based backpackers make it hard for local people as well as those living in or travelling by van. The litter left by backpackers, though not exclusively by them, and their sometimes poor sanitation practices leads to limits being placed on local van dwellers and travellers.
It was for the same reasons the City of Sydney moved against backpackers living in vehicles in Potts Point that Randwick Council in Sydney’s coastal Eastern Suburbs closed the Clovelly headland carpark overnight to deter travellers using it as an informal overnight campsite.
That displaced those seeking a free overnight space to park. Some found the street that runs alongside Baker Park in Randwick. I often walked past travellers’ vans and other vehicles parked here. Some were gone by morning while other stayed longer. They include local travellers, people who are not backpackers. The difference to the Clovelly Headland carpark was that there are toilets in the park and the travellers do not litter the street.
Understandable council actions against camping on the streets and in carparks might be, it puts tired drivers back on the road.
Phillip Witts. We were at Golden beach and watched backpackers leave a big bag of rubbish in the BBQ area. We told them to remove it and take it with them. They picked it up and put it in their wizzbang. 1 hour later we went down and the bag was back and no sign of the backpackers. Most Australians are tidy but its not the backpackers’ country so they don’t give a D@mn.
…Low Cost And Free Camping Australia Wide facebook.
Flooding the towns
Imagine you are here on a working visa, following the ripening fruit and farm crops around the country. Harvest takes maybe a few weeks before you move on to the next crop in some other place. Picking is not a highly paid industry so when transiting between jobs or touring around you look for somewhere cheap and preferably free to overnight or camp for a longer time. The difficulty for local people who live in or spend time traveling in vehicles comes, in part, through the impact of pickers and backpackers who buy cheap second-hand vehicles and attempt to live as cheaply as possible while touring the country. This includes camping on suburban streets, in urban carparks and coastal parking areas. The littering and trashing of places by itinerant backpackers is behind the creeping council regulation of overnight camping. Backpackers are not alone in this. There are plenty of locals who pollute campsites with their garbage.
Once, the occasional traveller’s van parked on the street was accepted. Now that an increasing number of travellers seek out secluded overnight parking places, it is not the occasional vehicle that parks there—it can be multiple vehicles. That makes local residents edgy. Edgy residents complain to council or police.
I have encountered and spoken with people overnighting in their vehicles in beachside carparks. Most, like the middle aged woman from Nimbin in NSW overnighting in the car park at Seven Mile Beach in Tasmania, have been responsible people who leave no trace of their stay. In some places in this state people go to places where there is no commercial caravan park, like the southeastern village of Southport, where I encountered someone overnighting in their minivan beside the beach.
Any solution?
The solution to the difficulties of itinerant van campers on the streets is simple. Provide free camping where they can overnight. All that is needed is a location and basic toilet facilities. There is no need for anything more elaborate.
Examples in Tasmania are the overnight free car camp on the edge of Lilydale in the north of the state. The local council allows a 24 hour stopover. There is a small park, a toilet block and picnic tables. The lakeside free camp at Oatlands in Tasmania’s Midlands is another. It too has a toilet block as well as a childrens’ playground and is well used. There is another south of the town of Snug, another on the edge of Scottsdale and more elsewhere.
When a Tasmanian council some years ago closed a free camp near a town, local businesses wanted it reopened because they knew that money saved by free camping would be spent in the town’s businesses. That probably happens elsewhere, too.
I don’t know what happened with that instance, however the argument has been raised in other places in the state, such as when the idea of charging to stay at the informal and basic campsites on the Bay of Fires in northeastern Tasmania was raised a few years ago. People often holiday there in their car camping tents and the nearest source of resupply is the town of St Helens. Money not spent in a commercial caravan park is potentially spent in town. Councils would do well to remember this. When council closed that free camp near town, travellers on social media advised others to ‘drive on through’. The same was said were council to start charging for the Bay of Fires campsites.
As for the argument that travellers should stay in commercial caravan parks, that ignores the cost factor, especially for travelling Tasmanians who live in the state with the lowest incomes in the country. It also ignores the reality that the economic benefit of caravan park accommodation flows mainly to the owner with a small portion tricking into the town economy, whereas free camping is said to be associated with spending across a broader range of businesses. Making the idea less viable during holiday times is that caravan parks become booked out. The result? People drive on through.
Rather than banning free camping in designated areas, councils and local residents would do well to avoid reacting out of personal resentment of free campers or to avoid the low cost of maintaining free camping areas, and take the wider systems thinking view that sees the place of free camping in relation to the spending that supports local economies and a town’s reputation among travellers.
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