Ellis Beach camper: Story behind Diana McKinstry, 51, and her controversial illegal campsite

You know her as the mysterious Ellis Beach camper causing fierce debate after setting up an illegal camp just metres from the Coral Sea. But she has a name, and a story to tell.

HER name is Diana McKinstry.

A 51-year-old mother-of-two raised in a small village in the island nation of Papua New Guinea.

You know her as the mysterious Ellis Beach camper causing fierce debate after setting up an impressive, semipermanent tent just metres from the Coral Sea, without the overheads.

Ms McKinstry knows what she is doing is illegal. She is even happy to move on when the Cairns Regional Council, or the Department of Transport, or Queensland Police – whoever’s responsible it is – gives her the tap on the shoulder.

Yet peek behind the zip of her impressive, self-sustaining campsite and it’s clear this down-on-her-luck woman displays some admirable resolve.

QLD_CP_NEWS_WEATHER_13JAN21

MORE NEWS

‘Need the truth’: Missing mum case reopened

Far North mourns loss of tourism pioneer

10 exciting Cairns Esplanade developments

And she’s posed a few questions of her own to those complaining of her rent-free lifestyle.

“Why are all the homeless people living out the front of shops in town? Is that better?” she said.

“Well, I want to come out here and put a tent up. I know it’s not my land, and it’s illegal, but I’ve put a tent up and I'm doing something.

“I have nothing to do, so I’ve cleaned up the beach, put something nice (here).

“I’m not harming anyone. If the council says move on, I’m happy to go but at least I’ve left it nice and clean for everybody.”

Nice and clean it is.

QLD_CP_NEWS_WEATHER_13JAN21

After losing her job as a cleaner and living on the streets “for the second time”, Ms

McKinstry set up camp on the Northern Beaches, eventually settling at Ellis Beach.

“My car broke down at the shopping centre at Clifton Beach and I left it there for a couple of days. It got towed away, and then I put my tent up.”

She still has the car.

Her family were subsistence farmers in a rural village in PNG, growing food crops to meet their own needs.

She is applying those skills next to the busy Captain Cook Highway north of Ellis Beach – which she says is “very loud because of the traffic, but the view is nice” – having planted chilli and banana trees, pumpkins, coconuts and sugarcane for cooking.

“It gives me a flavour,” she said.

“The banana trees are for my foil, I don’t want to buy tin foil so I use the leaves to wrap things up.

The banana trees out the front of Ms McKinstry’s tent. Picture: Brendan Radke

“If the birds eat the chillies they will take it, poo somewhere, and it will grow somewhere else.

“I like working the land, cultivating the land, and getting my hands dirty, I am happy to do that.”

She also hopes to make a vegetable garden out of an old car tyre, but has even higher hopes for her 18-year-old daughter, who recently finished year 12.

“I hope she can get a job somewhere and work,” she said.

Ms McKinstry is aware of the divide her stay at the beachfront camp is causing. Some say it’s an “eyesore”, a “joke”, a “disgrace”.

Others have called it lovely and to let her be.

Only once, she says, has a council officer approached her about the legality of her temporary home she made in October last year.

An aerial view of her campsite, only metres from the road and is clearly visible to motorists. Picture: Brendan Radke.

Sensing her time was coming to an end, she had a message to those fortunate enough to have their own homes – dry and comfortable – a steady income and full bellies.

“I’m not working right now, but I’m making myself useful,” she said.

“I don’t want to sit at home all day and watch TV and wait for my dog?

“This has been healing, doing something, getting fresh air, because I am so tired.

Diana McKinstry is happy to move on, but prefers to stay. Picture: Brendan Radke

“But I don’t want to argue with anybody, I know I’m breaking the law, but I’m not trashing the place.

“I am happy living here. I want to be left alone. But if you want to move me, you don’t like me here, I will go.”

Where to, she doesn’t know.

Originally published as Ellis Beach camper: Story behind Diana McKinstry, 51, and her controversial illegal campsite