Yeppoon and Rockhampton caravan parks book out past peak season due to Covid lockdown

As southerners flock to Central Queensland to escape lockdown, and caravan park bookings are over capacity beyond the normal peak season, how can we be sure the visitors don’t bring Covid with them?

Due to Covid lockdowns in southern Queensland, Capricorn Coast caravan park operators are experiencing a run on bookings which looks likely to extend into non-peak season.

Island View staff “stopped counting at 144 phone calls” one day last week, long after they had filled the 10 remaining vacant spaces in the park, according to manager Andrew Smits.

“I think a lot of people are panicking and making the split-second decision to pack the family in a van and hit the highway without doing their homework,” he said.

“They don’t understand we’re always busy in winter so there’s nowhere for them to go.”

Some parks staff said they were disappointed some of their regular ‘grey nomads’ would not be able to join them this year as they enter lockdown in their southeast Queensland homes.

For some of the smaller parks, their regular winter guests are more like family.

“We’ve had a lot of our regulars ring and say there were in quarantine,” Murray McLay from Beachside Holiday Park said.

“We’re going to miss them… but those places are filling quickly.”

Mr McLay had one regular ring from Mt Larcom to say she was on her way.

“I asked her, ‘Do you realise Brisbane went into lockdown?’ and she said, ‘Oh my God, no!’,” he said.

“She turned around and went back to be with her family.”

At the Blue Dolphin in Yeppoon, Dhani Dunne said she could fill her humble but friendly park twice over if they had the land.

“A lot of people didn’t plan their trip north; they are flying by the seat of their pants,” she said.

“They’re telling me they took the opportunity to get out ahead of lockdown and now there’s congestion on the road and no sites available at the parks.”

People who usually only stay two weeks in Central Queensland have decided to stay for two months or more, which is extending the park bookings into what would usually be their quiet season.

“No-one wants to go home,” said Mr Smits.

“We’re already up to 78 per cent full from the end of May through to the end of September, which is unheard of.”

There is a sense of optimism that the new surge of first-time visitors to Central Queensland will boost the local economy for generations to come.

“Lockdown has seen a whole new generation taking their kids out of lockdown and embracing the camping life,” Mr McLay said.

“In 10, 15, hopefully 30 years from now, we’ll see those children bring their kids back to holiday around here instead of flying off to Bali.”

“I’m standing here in the sunshine looking out over the ocean, watching someone throw a ball to the dog walking on the beach.

“Once you’ve been here, why would you ever want to leave?”

The tourism operators seem stoic about the possibility of travellers bringing the Covid virus north with them, as they follow health requirements in terms of providing hand sanitiser and follow social distancing etiquette.

They said there would be a greater crisis if the travellers were required to turn around and head back into the lockdown zones.

However, Mr Smits is concerned he and his fellow hospitality operators are not deemed eligible for the vaccination.

“They say we’re too young, that we’re not essential workers,” he said.

“Meanwhile we probably deal with as many people as the hospital staff do, and we have no way of verifying where they came from.

“I think our vaccinations should be counted as a priority.”

And there are concerns about whether the existing infrastructure can cope with the number of travellers who can’t find a place to book in.

There are already reports that people are camping illegally in carparks up and down the Capricorn Coast, and there is no way to monitor where they have come from.

Mr Smits is usually ambivalent about the council providing free camping spaces, such as the one in Kershaw Park in North Rockhampton.

But with more and more people making the exodus from southern Queensland, and the camp sites full or filling all the way up the coast, he thinks the Livingstone Shire Council may have to make contingency plans.

“The fear is they’re going to turn into giant, unmonitored quarantine camps,” he said.

“When you look at the massive free camps outside Gympie, where you come into contact with 60 or 70 other sites, you don’t know where they’ve been or where they’re headed.

“There’s nowhere for them to go back to, we don’t have the room for them, where are they going to go?”