We are grey nomads from Rockhampton but spend most of the year travelling Australia.
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I saw in the newspaper where you were talking about camping in your Albury shire and I would like to tell you what grey nomads’ needs are. It’s quite simple really – all we need is somewhere to park for a few days with access to water and a dump point.
We are not freeloaders as some people say. We will pay for something but not for something we all ready have like a shower and toilet.
We have travelled all over Australia spending eight months in Western Australia in 2016, we found towns that had free or low-cost camps were thriving towns that were once struggling. In 2013 we were in Home Hill and the town was dead so they put in a free camp and grey nomads spent $7000 in four days. Since then, an IGA supermarket has been built, shops are opening and the town is thriving again.
The modern motorhome or caravan doesn't need power as they have solar panels and batteries along with a shower and toilet. We have a Jayco Conquest motorhome and if the camp is close to town, we walk to shops and restaurants and spend our money supporting local business. As pensioners, if we stay in caravan parks, we can’t afford to spend.
Some of the campgrounds have toilets and coin-operated showers run by service clubs like Loins or Rotary. Home Hill has free shower, Condobolin runs a free bus to Gum Bend Lake three kilometres from town to take 60 or 80 nomads to the club for a meal on weekends and some free camps in North Queensland have 200 to 300 grey nomads every night.
Most grey nomads are like us and won’t stay in caravan parks over $22 – some never.
David Rickertt, CMCA Member, Rockhampton
Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction
Licenced gun owner threatens armed burglar with firearm has guns taken off him, and rightly so. The poor little burglar was probably traumatised by the nasty man with the gun, and if I was him, I would go to one of those God-awful, no-win, no-pay lawyers who seem to advertise more often than those other rip-off merchants selling funeral plans! No doubt they could lodge a lawsuit claiming his human rights had been violated, or some similar twaddle.
There was also another case reported last week where a police officer arrested a woman, with numerous bail breaches, who after abusing the magistrate walked straight out of court.
I sincerely hope that officer was disciplined, or even charged with wasting police time, when he could have been out serving the community better by say, fining motorists and raising the money our wasteful politicians so desperately need, or maybe he should have arrested the magistrate for dereliction of duty.
We have all seen recently how thin-skinned our judicial officers are so please accept my apology for the crack above, it was in no way intended to imply that the public may have lost faith in our legal system. No point stating the obvious really.
All those writers, like George Orwell, who made dire predictions about life in the future never really nailed it as far as how farcical life would become!
Welcome to life in Australia in the 21st Century, apparently scripted by Monty Python!