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sleepless in the grampians 10-May-2004 At 8:38:42 PM M

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I am not sure if this should go in trip reports or the objective dangers thread but,

This weekend my wife and two year old daughter camped at plantation with a few friends. The plan was to climb at the fortress on Saturday and Bundaleer on Sunday. On Friday night we got in fairly late and my daughter had a bit of an unsettled night so we were pretty tired on Saturday but we had a good day. Getting back to the campground we were greeted by a group of about a dozen who had been drinking since before lunch and seemed to be getting primed for a big night. We were camped about 70 meters away so I thought they probably wouldn’t distub us too much. During our dinner we were entertained by loud but not obscene music (mostly classic hits elvis etc but also one of the Australian idol guys). I went to bed pretty early thinking I could sleep through the noise. I was also hopeful that the large amount of beer and the cold would send them into their tents fairly early (I was aware that the beer may counteract the cold but it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic). As the night progressed they got loader and there was yelling and screaming. I think one of them thought he was a cowboy because he was actually yelling yee-haa. At some point there seemed to be two sources of music then it got really loud and we were treated to the pulp fiction soundtrack at least twice. For those of you not familiar with this album which I actually quite like, it features some fairly load yelling and gunfire. At 12.30 I had had enough (but no sleep) so I got up to ask them to turn it down. I don’t know if this was brave or stupid. Anyway it wasn’t the cowboys making the noise it was another group. They had their car parked with all of the doors open acting as a loadspeaker aimed at our campsite and possibly the cowboys who were on the other side of us. Anyway I asked them politely if they could turn it down a bit. They seemed a bit confused by this request but agreed.
I thanked them and returned to my sleeping bag quite pleased with the thought of some sleep. I am not sure how long it was before I woke up the sound of someone yelling “crank it up” followed by the excited replys ‘yeah crank it up” this was followed by the screaming jets until at least 4.30 am. Apart from the screaming jets there was quite a lot of yelling most of which was f this and f that. At one point there was a load scream which pleased us as we thought they may be murdering each other alas no it was probably just some primitive mating ritual. I decided that another polite request to turn down the music would likely result in a polite bashing so I stuck toilet paper in my ears and tried fairly unsuccessfully to get some sleep. At 6.30 my daughter who slept through all of this like a baby decided it was time for us to get up.
I was trashed and as we had to drive back to Melbourne without crashing into a large truck we thought it best to take it easy so we didn’t do any climbing (this was the worst bit).
Anyway if have been kept awake in campsites before and have possibly woken people up myself but the extent of this was far beyond anything I had experienced before.
Has anyone else experienced this sought of thing and more importantly how can you avoid it. Obviously plantation, stapelton and the pines are not the best choices for complete peace and quite but with a small child they are the best options. I would also be a bit concerned about using bush campsites in summer because of snakes.