During the course of their around-Australia adventures, grey nomads might expect to find their camping area to be invaded by everything from goannas and possums to mice and dingoes … but never chickens! Until now, that is.
A Warrnambool caravan park is just recovering from the ‘invasion of the chooks’ in which 300 of the feathered fowl laid siege to the park for weeks. The creatures snuck under caravans, nestled in the bushes and marauded around the pool area.
The problems all started when farmer, Allan ‘Swampy’ Marsh, moved into a farm next to the Big4 Hopkins River Holiday Park in Victoria and his chickens quickly found their way under the mesh wire fencing separating the two properties.
At first, it was treated as a bit of a joke but relations soured as the days passed and the chooks, which were laying more over 200 eggs on park grounds daily, went nowhere.
“The chickens treated our cabins like roosting houses and were slowly destroying our manicured gardens,” park manager, Brett Hein, told the Herald-Sun. “It started to smell quite a bit from the chicken faeces on the footpath.”
And the fowl nightmare also took its toll on park visitors.
“Some guests stated that if the chicken issue continued they wouldn’t come back to the park again,” Mr Hein said.
One visitor, Katheryn Abinett, was relieved she could just move on … an option not available to the park’s permanent residents.
‘It’s really bad,” she said. “I feel sorry for the people who actually live here, that’s the worst part.”
While the chickens days of living in a luxury van park and enjoying all its facilities may now be over and the fences are being throughout fixed, not everybody is happy.
According to 7New Melbourne, the farmer involved, Allan ‘Swampy’ Marsh is, aggrieved that so many of ‘his’ eggs ended up in the frying pans of caravan park visitors and residents!
· What is the most unusual campsite invasion you have experienced? Comment below.
Well for once they can’t blame grey nomads for leaving the mess.
I’m sure that would have not a very good eggsperience.
I think it has all been eggsagerated
Our girls provide us with beautiful fresh eggs most days plus provide ample fertilizer for the veggie garden. One of life’s real pleasures. What is the problem. I know parks where rabbits are a much bigger problem especially when they die under floors that are not accessible.
An eggseptional story…
A couple of years back we stopped for week in the free camp just north of Longreach where 18 roosters had been let loose in the local bush. The dawn chorus was magnificent.