Shaun Fisher, Byron Bay
Now that Fleet Street and Mayfair have been claimed and capitalised, it looks like scummy, dilapidated Old Kent Road is our last hope of monopolisation, right?
Nope. It seems as though Brunswick Heads campgrounds has recently become available. However, as the last remaining square was landed on, all three grounds are now being managed by ‘North Coast Holiday Parks’, who have placed rows and rows of shiny red plastic hotels all over them, pushing rent for an unpowered patch of grass to a whopping of $42 a night, minimum, off peak, for a patch of grass.
And now the council is shocked because people are seeking an alternative and camping on the beach, in a country riddled with them; what the heck?
Have they got their sticky fingers in the community chest as well, or has everyone just gone insane?
I currently reside in a spacious room in Lilli Pilli, Byron, in a share house for $140 dollars a week, and my house is kitted out with couches, beds, ovens, stoves, balconies, fridges, toasters, walls, carpets and privacy.
From the observation deck of my comfortable abode, $294 a week for a square patch of grass seems a little steep.
North Coast Holiday Parks manages select Crown Land campgrounds in NSW on behalf of the state government and claims that ‘revenue generated by the parks is invested back into the parks and the surrounding reserves for the benefit of both visitors and the local community’.
I don’t understand why these campgrounds need to be double the price of any others in the area (or Australia) if the revenue is simply fed back into land management.
When did the grounds in Brunswick become monopolised and the prices jacked? It seems to me that it must have gone unpublicised to have not received a reaction from the community.
