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Survey feedback requested on The Pines campground 13-May-2015 At 10:26:29 AM Wendy

Message

Anyway, my extended rant from the survey for Tracey:

What do I like about camping at Araps?

- reasonable price, basic but adequate facilities, close to the climbing, sociable but with enough space to run away if desired, the environment and native vegetation, birds and animals,

Not like/ issues with camping at araps?

- online booking, poor self regulation by campers and climbers (camping outside of designated areas, pooing everywhere, driving/parking off roads), running the bore dry, collecting firewood, fires outside of designated areas and outside of fire season, tables and picnic shelter only provided in day use areas (leading to people camping in day use areas to be close to them), bloody ugly non native pine trees, dust bowl from lack of understory, lack of wind shelter

General elaboration:

Shade is always nice in a camp ground, but so is wind shelter and the pines have never provided any wind shelter. a belt of native shrubs around some shade providing natives would be great.

I have absolutely no attached to the "traditional" pines. The gums have approximately 2 gums in them but that has never stopped people calling them the Gums campground. Similarly the pines will still happily get called the pines even if they only have a small percentage of native pines in them. And there is already a reasonable stand of native pines planted.

Pines are noxious weeds. They acidify the soil. They spread. They are ugly. They are unfitting with the native vegetation of the park. They provide no natural food or habitat for native wildlife. They also have relatively short life spans and will need replacing in another 70 years where local species (other than acacias!) can grow for 100s of years. The soil will also be further acidified and difficult to plant in for this 3rd generation planting. People picture them as the perfect campground shade tree without thinking that they were already well established (they were 50 years old or so when I first saw them) before climbers started coming there and will be straggly not very shady things that need babysitting for 20 years yet.

I am not concerned about limb drop. Campsites across the country are full of eucalypts. There are existing eucalypts in other parts of the camp ground. Limb drop is a (minor) risk in any tree. It is one of those uncontrollable hazards of being in the bush. Campsites in the grampians have lovely shade from natives and who last had a tree fall on them there?

I would like to see more rain water collection to reduce pressure on the bore and have it connected up to the flushing toilets. I am absolutely against the provision of showers and more flushing toilets with the already stressed water supply. Further composting toilets (of an adequate number to deal with the load) could be appropriate. I would be happy to have fires completely banned as it has been resolutely demonstrated that people are not self regulating fire use in the park.

I am not fussed about creating flatter sites. Part of the things to work around in camping is finding the best spot to put your tent. Site work seems like a substantial step towards creating allocated sites and further booking regulation, which I would prefer not to have. Perhaps larger signage or fencing is necessary to discourage people from camping outside of designated areas, but if people continue to fail to self regulate, I guess marked and allocated sites is the unfortunate next step (although I note that this still fails to stop people camping willy nilly at Frog Buttress).

I am also not fussed about group sites. There are only a few weeks of the year when there are multiple large groups at the mount at same time and in general, the camping is spread out enough to get away from whereever a group is if you want to.

Bring back the fee box. On site payment options for fees make paying far easier for people and thus far more likely to actually pay. Someone has to come and clean the toilets so they may as well empty a fee box as well.

Some picnic tables and maybe even a shelter in the camping areas would be great. I actually quite like the idea put forward in that stupid expensive review that the upper gums be redeveloped as a day use area, then the picnic shelter area and lower pines day areas could be opened for camping.