A free 24-hour motorhome and caravan stop seven kilometres north of Glen Innes is to continue operation … and the local van parks aren’t happy!
Severn Council received a request from the proprietors of Glen Innes Caravan Parks to change the roadside area adjacent to Beardy Waters on the New England Highway to a daily rest area only … but they rejected the notion.
The council said abolishing the 24-hour would risk seeing caravan and motorhome owners pass Glen Innes by, hurting a number of other local businesses. Councillors have now voted to keep overnight camping available at Heritage Park. They said rest areas were important in encouraging travellers to slow down and increase their stay duration in the town.
They also said they did not have the funds to convert the reserve to day visitation site nor the staff to continually enforce no camping on the site. Ross Wilson from Glen Rest Tourist Park said it wasn’t fair to local caravan park owners to have a free rest stop so close to town.
He said they weren’t asking for the stop to be abolished, just to be moved further down the road. “We’re not against free stops, it’s the location, they’re too close to town,” he told the Examiner. “We just wanted them to move it on 25 kilometres. There are eight stops between Tenterfield and Armidale, it’s becoming an unfair advantage for us.”
Mr Wilson told the paper that he had conducted a study over a seven-week period and found Heritage Park was far more popular than any local caravan park. “It was at least twice as full as the caravan parks combined,” he said. “There were 27 caravans and motor homes there one night. “How do they expect us to compete against a stop like that.”
He said the average cost to stay a night in a caravan park in Glen Innes is between $23 and $25. Mr Wilson said he was extremely disappointed in council’s decision.
