Caravan parks

..sign
of Proust or a bottle of Pinot Noir, not a barbecued artichoke heart to be seen,
just accents that could break glass at a hundred metres. I felt surrounded by
stereotypes from the Bulletin and Billy Butlin holiday camps. But, with the
exception of the on-going lack of Proust and the super strength strine accents,
everything seems to have changed.
Or is it me?
The parks have changed; they are better run, have better security and often
possess something approaching sanitary facilities. The laughingly titled ablution
blocks of old, smelt like Calcutta after a particularly rancid summer and were
destined to communicate foot rot with the speed of a rumour about Britney Spears.
There are newer more graceful establishments, but still, if you are a toilet
puritan, you may find communal living at this level of unavoidable intimacy
difficult to accept.
The food and wine is better, though politics still can be antediluvian. And
whilst the number of BMWs and Audis is small, there are people who have realised
the economics makes sense. Why spend $700,000 on a beach house when you can
rent a site at the time that most people actually want to be at the beach?
The Torquay caravan park is interesting in that meanders, the paths and sites
reflecting the past landscape where trees, rocks and buildings once were. Not
yet the rigid geometry of geometry, tarmac and uniformity of other parks. There
are common areas that have evolved over time and where endless barbecues and
almost tribal gatherings occur. Sites have appeared and disappeared over time
like aircraft into the Bermuda triangle. And, accidentally or otherwise, there
are generations who have been returning year after year, usually to the same
site, surrounded by people who have become their close friends. At one gathering
I counted four generations from one family ranging from to nine days old to
ninety years . Interestingly I knew all their names.
The campers founded the surf club to save themselves drowning, and generations
have grown up there and kept the pub across the road vibrant and alive. It is
an astoundingly safe place for children, as everybody knows everybody and therefore
can keep an eye out for the wandering young.
We came there through the good graces of the aptly named Val Kindness initially
sharing some time in her father and brother’s caravan, which, through
some osmotic process, we found eventually ourselves owning.
Perhaps the best thing is that there is no road between the caravans and the
surf beach. We don’t risk life and limb and the traffic is 95% pedestrian.
The odd thing is that Torquay township seems to have the only Rudd road street
or avenue listed in the Melways, and, of course, it is where Xavier (no bloody
relation) Rudd stems from.
But there are many who detest the very thought of caravan parks. How can the
average man, the proletariat, have the best access to the beach? How can they
shamelessly enjoy themselves in the unrefined and uncultured way they do? Why
don’t they have large mortgages on two story houses in estates called
‘The Sands’ and pay land tax? Enviously they look at all that Crown
Land that could be developed into another estate or turned into yet another
golf course.
So caravan parks are under pressure because, as the population has grown, the
number of parks – or the space in the parks – has declined.
And caravan parks have to make money, something which they do rather well –
although the money is used to fund all the surf coast amenities – not just the
caravan parks. I know you thought that the good citizens of Torquay and their
council had been both financially generous and environmentally conscious in
restoring the dunes, making new car parks, putting in board walks, and installing
little seats for public backsides, along with a thousand other acts of random
goodness. Well, they haven’t, because the revenue from the caravan parks
paid for most of that.
However, the world being as it is, every decade somebody comes along with the
idea of improving what essentially needs little improvement, apart from some
tinkering around the edges. Consultants are called in and agitation spreads,
committees are formed and submissions written. Government policy says that caravan
parks should be more accessible to anyone who wants to park their caravan or
tent. Curiously, apart from the school holidays they already can.
I suspect that it is the fact that people have being going to the same site
for years that irks authorities, who feel that they are stopping other people
from sharing their good fortune. Their sites should be given over to cabins
that can be rented out to casual tourists by the week for more money, giving
a higher return than any camp site (although conveniently ignoring that it only
takes grass seed and power to create a caravan site not $60,000 plus to erect
a cabin.
Caravan parks are in fact national treasures, the last vestigial remnants of
communal living and well-being; simple, unpretentious worlds where families
grow up and old together for a few brief summer weeks. We should care about
them before we find they have become extinct. .