Ghost camping

Hi gramps,

Whilst this is a start, it is only part of the problem with on line booking. The other issue is when people take your booked campsite and refuse to move. If there are no other suitable sites in the campground you are “screwed”. Without on site rangers, there is very little that can be done. Yes you can take pictures of the registration number and send it to the authorities, but that does not get you your campsite back, and there is currently no guarantee the other party will get a fine.

Macca.

The booking system was never going to work in most cases, and the “authorities “ are now finding that out and trying to use even more policing and rules.
The old system of first come best dressed and mostly paying by the honesty system worked pretty well, but the city office folk had a “better” idea, didn’t they. The park rangers were supposed to get more time for park work, but now they are monitoring campers anyway.
What a mess, and quite unnecessary.
The rule makers won’t back down, just make even more rules.

Cheers
Jim

I had written (email) correspondence about ghost camping in QLD two years ago. The reply (email) was to wait in the day use area until my booked site became available. I replied ‘I am taking that your response is permission to camp in the day use area’. Then silence, no response. I have the emails printed in my glovebox.

On reflection, I think they're following the politician's mantra from "Yes, Minister" - 'Appear to be doing something but do nothing'.

I’m not far from a national park and a number of times, I have tried to book a camp spot online, only to find “none available” nevertheless, I have gone to the spot for a day trip and found most of the camp’s empty. Talking to people about it and it was claimed that “people don’t make it” or “they got stuck or decided to stay elsewhere” but there were always too many vacant spots, too often, when up until online bookings the spots were mostly always full. I have a theory that the parks themselves flag the spots as taken, so they don’t have to cater for as many campers. Less maintenance, resources, cleaning of facilities, staff, etc. Interestingly, they have started charging entry fees which they didn’t have before online bookings. Motels have been known to do the same thing of saying they are booked out when in reality they have vacant rooms because they are running with minimal staff and cannot cater to too many guests. I have also noticed “seasonal areas” being closed off a lot longer than previous years.

The other factor which compounds this issue is the 02.00PM arrival time. Plenty of people stay later than the 10.00AM departure time especially on a Sunday as this gives them most of the day to enjoy before heading home. We have had many incidents were people are still on the site we booked at .01.00PM

George L5 is another scammer/spammer with imbedded links to sites that have nothing to do with “Exploring” this great country of ours. We need the moderator button back on this site as an easy way to highlight these scammers/spammers. I suspect Daniel G to be one as well.Check out the links that have been underlined.

These are becoming more prevalent.

Macca.

A friend has just spent the past month around 'Corner country' & found that a number of NP sites have gone back to the old 'envelope system'. One can only hope it is something which will gain favour further afield!