Thursday, Jan 14, 2010 at 16:45
Hi nighttrain
As we tour in a relaxed and relatively unplanned mode, we make a point of never booking in a CP. Having said that we prefer the lifestyle out in the bush where possible, or national park campgrounds and cities generally not on our agenda. We do like to utilise a CP for a good shower, shampoo and
laundromat about once a week (also showers can often be found at servos and many towns have laundromats), and when doing the tourism thing or coming in for maintenance and shopping in a larger centre.
It seems our luck of the draw to come into a town the week of their annual show or local event which sometimes makes getting a spot harder, however most CPs have a section of unpowered sites fairly under utilised, so if you are running on solar there should be no problems. If the place is packed out due to an event, ask at the tourist info centre. They often organise overflow camping at a show ground or sports ground.
Times we have thought it necessary to book were
Melbourne prior to leaving for Tasmania, and we booked on line for the Qld parks
campground a couple of days ahead of time at Girraween NP as it was school holidays and the grounds were fully booked for the weekend and filling fast during the week. We still had to get there early in the day to find a spot we could fit our rig into.
If in doubt, we will
bush camp, then get into town during the morning when there are usually plenty of
places as people move out.
Only once have we had to go to '
plan B' which would be go and find somewhere out in the bush or move on to the next town. This exception was in SA last year when we struck a nasty hot wind,
well short of
Melrose where we had intended to overnight. Rather than drive in such circumstances we normally park up as soon as possible, however due to the heat, i wanted power to run the air con as we wouldn't run the genny in such severe fire
hazard conditions. We tried the small town of Balaclava, expecting to find the small CP near empty. It wasn't, it was full (no unpowered sites) - not very attractive either, but must have been full due to seasonal workers. Hence we did go to another town and found an ever so much nicer place at the Auburn sports ground.
We have been to
Broome in June 2003 and got a place overnight, and
Darwin in August last year and got a good roomy place for the few days we needed at the small CP we had chosen, without any prior booking.
Takarakka CP at
Carnarvon Gorge Qld came close. This popular but expensive ($38 per night) park have the monopoly for seeing
the Gorge. We hadn't booked and they found us a lovely big site (which turned out to be the very site another traveller had recommended we ask for), but only available for two nights. They would have found us another spot but maybe harder to manoeuvre into with our F250, but we did all our sightseeing in two full on days and moved on.
Motherhen
AnswerID:
399386
Follow Up By: nighttrain - Friday, Jan 15, 2010 at 14:24
Friday, Jan 15, 2010 at 14:24
thank you Motherhen for your great advice, you have some great ideas and we take note of everyones stories. We really dont want to book cp parks because we just want to go with the wind, after working all our lives and having to be there on time everyday and working by the clock we just want to be free, I know some
places we might have to book but will cross that bridge when we have to.
FollowupID:
668532