Dear Jaclyn and Heidi,
Help! Our dream trip is in danger of turning into one giant ‘Tidy Up Australia tour’. Hubbie Tom and I love our new lifestyle, but things are changing. It all started when we began picking up the odd bit of litter left behind by other campers. Then we started noticing how much rubbish there was, so we started travelling with big plastic bags and ‘tongs’. Now it seems like we’ve taken it one step further, and the first thing we do when we arrive at a new campsite is to wander around all sites picking up every bit of rubbish we can find. I think we are in danger of becoming obsessive about it. We talk about litter a fair proportion of every day, and I reckon Tom is almost disappointed if we find a campsite that is already pretty clean. What should we do?!
Tanya
I suspect you already know what you should do, Tanya. You can’t become one-caravan tidying machines. You can’t visit every site in the country, or a state, or even an individual region, making it perfectly clean. And, even if you could, the mess would probably start building up again before you had even pulled out. Decide what you can reasonably do, and then just do that. If you are at the stage where you are looking behind every bush and around every corner to find rubbish, then you have probably already gone too far and it is destabilising your trip. Set a good example and feel good about what you do, but don’t risk obsessing about it. In the end, we only live once and you and Tom should make the most of your time on the road. Sadly, litter – like war and crime – will outlive us all.
Jaclyn
Thank goodness we have people like you and Tom out there, Tanya. Litter attracts litter and the more we show we care, the more others will, too. Of course, it is frustrating and unfair. But we must never, any of us, give up the fight. One of the biggest threats confronting the grey nomad lifestyle is the scourge of litter, and it is only the likes of you and Tom who stand between us and the closure of more free camps and the further blighting of our landscape. Talk about the issue with other grey nomads, make contact with litter-fighting organisations, take photos, write to local authorities, tell people what you are doing, and then keep on doing it, Tanya. It may seem like a hopeless task, but it isn’t. Thousands, perhaps millions, of current and future grey nomads applaud you.
Heidi
