JIM FAGAN
The news is out, illegal camping is in. And if you have a mobile phone and access to social media like Facebook and Twitter you’ll get the latest word on where to enjoy free camping in Noosa plus new to the market apps that tell you everything you need to know – even when the sites become vacant!
The huge rise in camping freeloaders has caused Noosa Council’s chief public safety law officer, Phil Amson, to write to 18 rental vehicle companies like Britz and Wicked Campers to pass the word to their customers that there is no free camping in Noosa. It might be okay in other areas but there’s nothing here.
“We’re tearing our hair out,” he told Noosa Today. “We have three officers and they are working seven days a week. In one morning this month we had complaints of up to 78 campers from Tewantin to Noosa Heads so you can imagine how long it took an officer to go round them all.
“Under our local law you can’t camp, pitch a tent, stay overnight in a car, a caravan or a campervan or any vehicle designed for that purpose on public land. Everyone wants to come here and they want to set up camp in high profile areas like the river mouth, outside the National Park at Noosa Heads, Sunshine Beach or Tewantin’s Memorial Park.
“They want water views so they can wake up and say ‘How lovely. It’s fantastic.’ Trouble is we’ve got people paying a lot of money to live in those areas and, when they open their front doors and see beach towels hanging out of the cars and rubbish everywhere, it becomes a problem and we get complaints.”
Mr Amson said officers tried to deal with every complaint. “We give them warnings and hand out flyers telling them here’s the caravan parks we want you to go to. On the spot fines are available but we try to educate them first. When we get repeat offenders they get a fine of $550. It’s a big sum.”
New signage is now being put up in high profile areas, saying free camping is not allowed but, according to Mr Amson, word is being spread through social media and phone apps that if you camp in these places you will get a fine. “We’ve been issuing fines but in the last couple of days we’ve found people are moving into the outer suburbs, which means we have to increase our patrol area.
“I have asked our IT people to find out who the administrators of these apps are and to get them to stop. They are giving misleading information to members of the public who really are quite innocent. We want campers to come here and enjoy the Noosa experience and do their Fraser Island trips from here but we don’t want them coming here and breaking the law because of false and misleading information.”
