Inverell NSW - How to chase tourists and RV away

Hmmm.... I personally have found Tenterfield quite RV friendly, with good service from the guys who look after the showground site (we find the CP too tight for our rig) and friendly people at the Information Centre. I can't comment about Inverell as I have visited but not stayed o/n _ but it is on our to do list. As to Glen Innes, I have been there a few times but would not consider staying o/n.
Cheers
Andrew

Have you actually put your concerns formally to the councils concerned, it is possible that you came across a couple of bad apples. It is the councils perogative to restict the use of the showgrunds in preference for travellers to use many camping options in and around town. I'll keep an open mind.

Hi Travelling,

Next time you are in Inverell try the camping ground out at Copeton Waters State Park.

No Gestapo, roomy sites, good water, good showers and a good reception is assured and the prices are not unrealistic either. One of my favourite spots as you can tell.

I have only ever stayed in Inverell township once, in the caravan park by the river, just over the river from the showground and it was very tight. A nice park but they are jammed in like sardines and the reception left something to be desired.

I was asked by a mate to enquire about prices for an on site van in that van park.

"We don't have onsite vans" came the none too pleasant reply from the lady behind the counter. No pleasant suggestion of their alternative accommodation, no way, just an aggressive unpleasant reply. Anyone would think they rated more than 3 stars from her attitude. In fact I would downgrade them to a 2 star rating just on that reception alone.

As I said to a business owner in my town "If I had staff that did not smile at a customer when they came in the door I would drag them across the coals".

It comes as a bit of a surprise to some people but that person coming through the door is more than likely the one that is going to pay something toward the bills, so you better be pleasant to them.

I have also stayed in Glen Innes and found the showground manager to be very pleasant. The facilities were a bit basic but the reception was agreeable.

The problem comes in when some people abuse the privileges afforded by some of these towns and thereby ruin it for the rest.

However, the message has not filtered through yet, people are getting more budget conscious because the fuel prices are starting to bite so money has to be saved somewhere and van sites are the one area where a saving can be made and will be made. Most certainly by me anyway.

Cheers, Bruce.

We are just back from a week in Glen Innes where a group to which I belong has just held it's annual get together, and the folk there could not have been friendlier, more accommodating nor helpful. Caravan park owners, hardware store erators, supermarket, coffee shops and cafes .. you name it, we were treated in a friendly fashion with courtesy and kindness. I have just fired off a letter to the council thanking them for the way their locals treated us. Most were unaware that there was a major gathering in their showground, but were just naturally friendly, country folk.

Sounds like you may have struck a couple of bad ones in Inverell, because from your post you seem to be a reasonable bloke.Shrug it off, write a letter to the council and move on would be my suggestion.

And travel safely and enjoy the rest of the people you meet.

:)

OBJ

Must be a different Inverell to the one we stayed at. The reception at the Inverell caravan park couldn't have been friendlier. In fact everyone we met during our admittedly very short stay seemed like a nice bunch of people.
I thought $28 a night powered or $20 a night unpowered was quite reasonable.

Cheers
Pop

After the showground was closed to casual campers, and they had to go through hoops to get the right approvals, only six rigs were permitted under the licence. Yes, six sites is really only paying lip-service to showground camping, and at a price similar to many privately owned rural caravan parks. Anyone interested can read about the long running saga and what eventuated.

There are other options for showground camping within the Shire, and cheaper with Ashofrd and Delungra showgrounds. There are also low cost campgrounds at a number of dams and National Parks.

Hi Travelling,
We run a caravan Park with no gates, so you can enter the park without calling in to the office.
People with good manners would call into the office and ask to use the facilites or look around to see if they would like to stay. There are a number of travellers who think that they can just drive in and drive around and try to use the facilites. No wonder we get upset. Would you like us to drive/walk around your private property without first asking you. There are always two sides to any argument.
Cheers, Jonty

The caravan Park owners nearest to the showgrounds have a huge amount of sway with the Inverell Council. When they purchased the business the first thing they did was to lobby the Council and got their way.
But there are other options like Asford, Glen Innes & Tenterfield. We don't need to spend any money in Inverell.
Too bad so sad
PeteM (Qld)

Inverell have put the showgrounds up to $20
the showgrounds caretaker needs a good tune up and education when we went to use the dump point
we were going to have our local hobby area meeting in Inverelll and with the charges and attitude at the tourist information we all went to Guyra and rented the showground for a nominal reasonable charge for the 22 vans and motorhomes

The fees at Copeton Dam have skyrocketed and now unaffordable. We stopped 2x at Copeton Dam now will go to the free section if we go that way again.

Glen Innes think they can gouge tourists when the Celtic Festival is on and stick up the charges in the showgrounds from $20 to $25 so we didn't go

These gouging tourist unfriendly councils try and force you into over priced accommodation which only supports the caravan park owners and denies all the other businesses in town a dollar.

We used to stop in Armidale and now they have priced themselves out the market. We had our vehicle serviced 2x at the dealer, bought tyres, went out to lunch 2x a week, bought a laptop as we passed through and stopped at Armidale regularly, now we just drive through on the highway waving to Armidale at their stupidity

I get a bit sick of the grey nomads who want a free ride. Why should rate payers support their life style? They are claiming that the free camping/freedom camping brings money into the RV friendly towns. The reality I hear on the road is that they are so tight they spend as little as possible and argue over the price of what they do buy. The local businesses find its not worth the bother. It seems that some who do occasionally stay in van parks take their revenge by stealing anything including the toilet paper.

Why do they have to deride the local caravan parks as being greedy rip offs, Cant these small businesses make a bit of a profit after all thats why people take the risk of going into them.

I know they are all not as bad as I'm making out but I think you get my point.

Ummmmmmm Does Inverell have a problem?

Prior post on Inverell......sounds familiar

I prefer to free camp where ever possible....not so much to escape fees, but to camp somewhere nice and quiet.

But a nice van park every now and then is good ( the missus loves them ), but showgrounds ???.....nah, usually too close to the grey nomads, and their dogs ( or cats ), and as a general rule unfriendly ( you nice ones don't get on the bandwagon and abuse me )

I find ( personally ) that it doesn't matter whether you are in a van park ( or showground ) in town or free camping out of town, you tend to spend about the same money in town....in town you tend to eat lunch or dinner at least one of the days and if free camping you usually come into town to restock with some things, but as said, some towns make it easy and some make you feel unwelcome..but, whenever I've opened my wallet, I've never met anyone who didn't want to take my money....

The reason many of these showgrounds offer cheaper prices is due to the fact that they are not meeting the same requirements and standards required for a caravan park. It is not unreasonable that caravan parks voice an opinion about the unfairness of this – that is the beauty of Australia, everyone is entitled to a viewpoint.

Putting that aside though, the argument used increasingly these days is that many RVs are fully self-contained and don’t require all the “add on facilities” but the reality is that caravan parks are either required to provide them or need to provide them to attract a broader custom.

It is difficult to “carve out” the bits that self-contained RVs don’t want or need – in fact there are instances where this has been mooted, but government regulations have stifled it.

But it does highlight an issue that needs to be resolved…

And don’t forget, wherever you stay someone needs to provide the land, which is usually rateable by the local council, plus there is the cost of capital employed to provide and maintain it, regardless of the level of services provided. And if it is council land, the ratepayers fork out for the cost, and that includes the local caravan parks.

Whilst it is easy to use the “throw-away” line that caravan parks are rip-offs and profiteers, it is mostly uninformed discussion as many making those statements would have no idea of the costs associated with running a caravan park.

Seemingly, many are estimating the cost of what should be charged to be based on their own individual travel budget, not what it might actually cost someone to provide the service.

This may actually be a case-in-point that in Inverell the cost of providing the sites in the showground is now similar to the local caravan park.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised with that outcome given the Showground Trust has had to spend the capital to bring it to a standard commensurate with those that the local caravan parks are required to meet by law.

My interest in this topic is that I want to see that caravan parks survive as they are important part of the accommodation landscape in Australia – the risk is that in time, free camp or low cost sites in close proximity to towns will disappear from over use or closed down by councils. If we hound caravan parks out of business in the meantime, accommodation options for many will disappear.

Who is that most likely to affect – those seeking the travel lifestyle, especially in retirement.

And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with free or budget camping, if it is available, but there is increasing evidence that many communities are becoming less supportive as the economics of providing it are not stacking up against the income it generates for the community as a whole.

And for sure, the cry goes out along the grapevine to “avoid this town or that town” because of the non-provision of low cost or free camping, akin to the playground days of old when someone took the “bat and ball” and went home because they didn’t get their way – and often at the cost of missing out on other attractions that the area may provide.

The term “cutting your nose off to despise your face” comes to mind…

One local business owner in a small town I visited recently suggested that if they had a dollar for every complaint it received from the travelling public about the prices it needs to charge to remain viable and provide an important service, they would get far richer from that than selling goods in the shop!

Everyone wants value for money, but just remember it all comes at a cost…

Cheers, Baz – The Landy

Recently I stayed at Glenn Innes show ground for a week. In that time we spent approximately $1,400 at Woolies, Mitre 10, the butcher (we liked his product), Irrigation warehouse, Caltex service station, the strawberry farm, book shop, cheap shop, camping shop and we supported the men's shed and a few that I probably forgot to mention.

Now it annoys the hell out of me when these conversations gravitate to community costs of semi-free camping and conveniently avoid the benefits to the community that come with travellers. Now these benefits are not just in the form of spending in the broader community it also includes volunteering and in some situations providing an available work force.

I can only assume that those unbalanced arguments come from self interested park owners as it is those that seem to be often quoted as being unhappy and disadvantaged by the so called free camping. I imagine that the EO alumni can see through this.

Kind regards

We don't expect others to pay for our caravanning trips. We are very willing to pay for a patch of dirt to park our self contained van on and some private individuals (not just councils) seem able to make a profit out of charging between $10 and $20 dollars for this with dump point and a couple of taps. We also value the peace and the space such places provide. We are willing to pay more for a stay in a caravan park. We understand that some parks charge a high fee because they are in a high rate area with high costs, or because the owners have a large debt to service or because they provide excellent resort style facilities that we do not want although others might. So we usually prefer the smaller basic and cheaper parks and see no reason to be ashamed of that.
Yes ratepayers pay to support local tourism in many ways. We don't feel bad about that either as, living in Brisbane, we pay very high rates and lots of tourists are enjoying our parklands, free tourist buses, public toilets etc while we are travelling elsewhere.
Tourism benefits all communities and there are many different markets, including caravanners, with different needs and budgets.. Canny councils and businesses look for ways to attract different types of tourists - the more the better! It is not really helpful to denigrate particular groups of potential tourists or to give preference in Council support of a select group of local businesses at the expense of others.Lynne

Looks like I will have to further investigate the benefits of these self contained RV's of which many speak.

So if I have this straight, these vehicles will, without external reliance, generate all their power needs including what is required to operate some little luxuries such as the air con I am enjoying in this caravan park, where by the way it got to 37 degrees today, and do so without bringing the wrath of the anti generator brigade down upon my head.
Generate a never ending supply of fresh potable water. Or do they have enough power to drag around a 20,000+ liter tanker?
Hygienically dispose of all the commercial and human waste that seems to go with day to day living and do so without reliance on a dump point that must be supplied and serviced by that magical mystical creature that costs zero.
Navigate themselves to free camping spots so that I can take advantage of all these benefits.
I am assuming the initial and on going costs of such a vehicle will be well within the financial abilities of the average grey nomad.

WOW! Such a machine. I must get looking.

Cheers
Pop

The following thread appearing late last week might be of interest to contributors in this thread on a couple of levels. Firstly, it provides an update on current access to Ulupna Island in Victoria, a popular camping spot.

Access to camping areas stopped (Ulupna Island Victoria)

Importantly, what it does flesh out is a point I often make and made a couple of times in this thread. Reading between the lines, and feedback from others, it would appear this area may remain closed for a period of time because Parks Victoria does not have the funding avaialbe to fix the damaged roads to an acceptable level to be able to re-open.

I’ve chanted long and hard that we should not be reliant or have any expectation that goverement bodies, whether Federal, State, local, or semi-autonomous bodies like Parks Victoria, will rush to make funds available for tourism infrastructure – they have an atrocious track record on it. This particular instance may serve to underscore this further…

Cheers, Baz – The Landy