Yakabout - My kingdom for a camp site

Home

Josh's Blog

My kingdom for a camp site

PDF

| Print |

E-mail

Saturday, 01 September 2007

Someone needs to regulate all this regulation

There's been a few surprises in store for me thus far but none so startling at the sheer lack of available camping sites. It seems as if the days where you could just pick out a small patch of flat ground and erect a tent are practically gone. Although there's plenty of caravan parks around, there isn't a lot of accomodating the backcountry camper. It wasn't always this way and as far as I'm concerned, there's really no need for it to be. Considering that Australia consists of 7,617,930 square km of land and only has a human population of about 20 million (about the same amount of people that live in the single city of Mumbai in India) there is plenty of space to go around.

Once upon a time we would have been allowed to pitch a tent here

But so much of this land is now 'protected' and off limits to campers, which is very unfortunate. I'm not sure how and why it came to be this way but I'm not terribly happy about it. The sunshine coast is a very touristy area and that may be part of the reason for it, but not everyone wants to stay in caravan parks every night. It's not just because some of them are overly expensive (and don't like being reminded of it) but more because it's just fun camping out in the bush, away from the hordes of sheople.

The same thing is happening to our waterways as well. Before I even think about fishing anywhere I first have to check if I'm actually allowed to do it, because national marine parks are popping up everywhere. If only I'd undertaken this trip 10 years ago the going would have been a lot easier, not to mention cheaper. I'd like to think that when my son grows up he could follow in my footsteps, but the way things are going he'll be lucky to be alowed to step outside of his front yard.

I guess I should just consider myself lucky that I'm doing this now, because if I'd have waited another 5 years (which is what I'd originally planned) I wouldn't be able to do or see a great deal. If you've ever entertained the idea of touring around Australia, my advice is to do it sooner rather than later. Of those 7,617,930 square km that Australia consists of, the freely accessable areas are shrinking dramatically.