Metro News - Newspaper Online - formerly Toorak Metro News Victoria au newspaper Melbourne south eastern Bayside Melbourne

Caravan Parks don’t exactly conjure up images of exotic locations in the world of glossy travel brochures, even though many are located on prime beachfront and riverbank locations throughout the country.

While the big chain operators have made efforts to spruce up the image of the franchised caravan parks, I must admit a partiality to staying in oddball privately run grounds in off- the- main- drag locations.

The amenities may not be equipped with the latest fixtures and fittings. But, in my experience, these parks are sufficiently compensated by, at times, quirky owner-operators and idyllic locations.

Recipe For Sterile Hospitality

To highlight the ever- changing landscape of tourism businesses, I received an investment prospectus in the mail informing me “of the corporate efficiencies and accountability measures” being introduced into a group of caravan parks recently purchased by an investment consortium from WA. To my mind, “corporate efficiencies in caravan parks” seems an oxymoron of sorts, and a likely recipe for sterile hospitality.

There’s something quite humbling about a line of blokes standing side-by-side brushing their teeth and shaving together in a park’s communal facility block. Managing directors and disability pensioners dental flossing together of a morning has a way of keeping egos on a level playing field.

Anonymity in Caravan Parks

It’s probably why some of the nation’s most influential and powerful business leaders prefer the anonymity of holidaying with their families in caravan parks. In a recent interview published in The Age, Harold Mitchell, Australia’s most influential media broker, confessed to taking his annual holidays at his favourite caravan park every year. The sycophantic world of Collins Street business lunches would steer anyone seeking a reality check into the grounds of a Big 4!

While the gems as far as caravan parks go are a delight to stumble across, there are also the disappointments to contend with. One such park in Tasmania didn’t appreciate me voicing my dissatisfaction with the standard of the on-site caravan we had booked over the phone. The manager’s response to the complaint was: “What did you expect for $50 a night. The Hilton?”

Word quickly spread amongst the park’s regulars that my partner and I were the ‘complainers’. These regulars, who came to the park every year to fish were ‘suspicious’ of anyone arriving not towing a boat or van. “Why would you come to Bruny to read a book?” was overheard on a few occasions within earshot of our site. And my regular routine of yoga style exercises of a morning had them sniggering in their huddles. Our fishermen weren’t exactly a cross section of open-minded free spirits I’m sad to report.

Cost Effective Holidays

Caravan parks have provided cost effective holidays for generations of Australians, but demographic and economic pressures are closing in on many of them. Those strategically located parks, especially if they have water frontage, are being eyed over for housing subdivisions across the country, and quite a few have already succumbed to the developer’s earth moving equipment.

I tried to find The Sandy Bay Caravan Park in Hobart only to discover I was a few years too late, and they’d built housing on the site. The owners of one park where I stayed had been trying to sell for months without any luck as the faded For Sale board clearly showed. The hitch was that two-thirds of the park’s land holdings were on Crown Land, thus severely hindering any form of re development. “If this was all freehold land I could have sold it ten times over for a housing subdivision”, the operator lamented.

Prey To Housing Subdivision

It’s a regrettable economic reality that caravan parks, which aren’t council owned or on Crown Land, will increasingly fall prey to higher density end usage. And I don’t mean cramming more vans on site.

Maybe traditionalists shouldn’t view the introduction of corporate efficiencies sceptically if it means they’ll save parks and turn them into viable enterprises. We need to keep in mind that once the apartments go up there will be no turning back.

Fmarsani@yahoo.com.au