There are growing fears that many New South Wales caravan parks are losing their traditional identity as affordable destinations for holidaymakers and travellers as the building of cabins continues apace.
In the state’s north coast, residents say they have been ‘dudded’ by the state government’s takeover of council-run caravan parks. The government has been upgrading the parks in response to what it said was consumer demand, replacing camp sites with more upmarket accom-modation.
The Northern Star newspaper reports that, in the past six years, North Coast council’s have lost control of eight Crown land caravan parks – at Brunswick Heads, Byron Bay, Lennox Head, Ballina and Evans Head – and the same story is being played out along the entire NSW coast.
Byron Shire mayor Jan Barham has been a vocal opponent of what she calls the commercialisation of Crown land, as she says it is at odds with the principles of Crown land usage as set out in the Crown Lands Act.
Cr Barham says the government needs to prove that it is fulfilling its stated aim of delivering better operating caravan parks, and putting profits back into maintaining and improving the parks and investing in the local Crown Reserves as it promised to do.
“They need to be genuine,” she told the Northern Star.
Many local residents are also angered about being ‘locked out’ of parks and losing access to their rivers, lakes and beaches.
President of the Ballina Environment Society, Dr Lyn Walker, says many of these coastal caravan parks were traditionally occupied only in peak periods.
“The rest of the time the community enjoyed the facilities, it was their park,” she said. “Now what’s happening with the government taking over, is that they are excluding the community.”
She said a fence had been erected around Lake Ainsworth Caravan Park shortly after the state government took control in 2010. Locals had previously used the pathways through the park to walk to the lake, but were now kept out.
At Brunswick Heads, there are plans to fence the Terrace Caravan Park, which has long been used as a walkway to access the town and river foreshore,
Ballina MP Don Page told the Northern Star he did not see a problem with turning a profit from the parks and described the fence as ‘protection for paying guests’.
