Freedom camping in Australia: current status, key stakeholders and political debate

Abstract

Freedom camping is fuelling nationwide political debate in Australia as a rapidly expanding recreational vehicle (RV) market impresses upon regional and urban communities its strong desire to avoid traditional caravan parks and the features that they present/represent. Community leaders are being lobbied to consider the needs of all types of caravanning visitors to their communities. Conflict and positional power struggles are thus surfacing within national caravanning communities and within national, state and local community governance arenas. This paper provides an overview and an assessment of the history and status quo of the issues. It is structured to first set the broader political contest within a local context, and this informs a working definition of freedom camping. We then review the growing, but limited and fragmented, international literature concerning freedom camping; discuss the phenomenon of freedom camping with reference to supply and demand issues, including the oversimplified descriptions of freedom campers' motivations; and finally, highlight the complex nature of stakeholder engagement and influences on policies as they relate to freedom camping through policy dialogues. The planning and management of spaces and places as limited resources are inherently political activities and are valued for a variety of competing uses by users with diverse perceptions and motivations across time. Through this exploratory analysis, we identify the perspectives of key stakeholders in the policy process, provide a baseline for future discourse on issues relating to freedom camping and conclude with a call for further critical analysis on this subject to inform rational debate on policy-making, planning and management implications for regional and urban communities.

At home away from home: visitor accommodation and place attachment

“…For example, a second home may be both familiar by virtue of repeat visits and long-term (often multi-generational) ownership, and novel by virtue of changing surroundings and visitors (Jaakson 1986). Similarly, sustained use and occupancy of a recreational vehicle can generate feelings of home at the same time as it facilitates exploration through high levels of mobility (Caldicott, Scherrer, and Jenkins 2014).…”

Camping Tourism: A Review of Recent International Scholarship

“…The phenomenon of recreational camping -in its various manifestations -is observed throughout the world, albeit is viewed as particularly popular in the tourism economies of North America (Stephens et al, 1989;Janiskee, 1990;Timothy & Teye, 2009;Brooker & Joppe, 2014;Young, 2017), Australia (Caldicott et al, 2014) and New Zealand (Collins & Kearns, 2010;Collins et al, 2018). Its popularity is further recorded in several countries of Europe including Croatia (Grzinic et al, 2010;Cerovič, 2014), Denmark (Mikkelsen & Blichfeldt, 2015), Germany (Doğantan & Emir, 2019), Spain (Garcia-Pozo et al, 2011;Salo et al, 2020), Turkey (Doğantan et al, 2017) and United Kingdom (Rees Pryce, 1967;Prentice & Witt, 1991;Lashley, 2015).…”

“…Caldicott et al (2018) argue that the caravan park, as a subsector of tourism accommodation services, has been viewed as the traditional symbol of caravanning. But, that the focus in some countries -particularly Australia and New Zealand -is shifting now more on the caravan itself and its serviceability as a long-term, touring residential home as opposed to a temporary short-term holiday unit to be conveniently parked in a caravan park (Caldicott et al, 2014;Collins et al, 2018).…”

The frictions of slow tourism mobilities: Conceptualising campervan travel

“…Previous research has emphasised notions of freedom associated with campervan travel and how it has developed its own subculture (Caldicott, Scherrer and Jenkins 2014;Kearns, Collins and Bates 2016). In the Australian context, the proliferation of campervans has become a significant element of backpacker tourists, more elderly 'grey nomads' and also Chinese tourists renting campervans all of whom seek intimacy and sociality on the move (Jones and Selwood 2012;Redshaw 2017;Wu and Pearce 2014).…”