Roaming for relevance
Politicians and
pollsters hunting the grey vote usually stalk retirement villages and pensioner
clubs.
Handy because electors
mustered in dining rooms and community halls tend to groupthink. Dissidents don’t do well in confined spaces
where they’re condemned to stay mum or risk exclusion.
Wrong spots. Hucksters should stake out the hills and
creek banks where independent thinkers and determined doers thrive and
allegiances can be shifted – the backblock campgrounds.
These aren’t the profit-driven holiday parks with garish
banners and bouncy castles, but paddocks plus basics, often run by rural
community groups. The Gun Club in Roma,
the natural gas origin town of Queensland,
lets blow-ins squat alongside the clay pigeon catapaults
Nearby Injune has turned its racecourse from a monthly venue
into a seven-day a week stopover. A yard
behind the rail line at Salmon Gums near the west-end start of the Nullarbor Plain has been spruced up by volunteers who
yarn to visitors round the camp kitchen.
Many of the movers are also shakers, retired professional
couples who’ve sent the kids packing and decided to do the same. They have cash
and a determination to die being active.
This is no small cohort: As you scan this paragraph there are probably around
120,000 campers on the blacktop, cruising not racing. That’s according to the industry which has websites competing for dollars by offering
info on secret hideouts and special de
With more than 600,000 RVs registered
across the country as one pulls into the carport, another hitches the trailer
and heads inland.
‘RV’ is one more US import, meaning recreation
vehicle, a four-wheel-drive not used for work, caravan or campervan. What used to be a ute with a swag can now be
the Taj Mahal on several axles.
Owners spend months selecting the right beast. Stay-a-nighers go for campervans so they only
need to plug into powerpont or genset;
those planning longer stays to explore, fish or just yawn and yarn away
the days prefer caravans so they can unhitch the car and potter around town.
Few are technophobes.
Octogenarians swapping news on the lastest cellphones with the equally
adapt grandkids half a continent away are a common sight. So are oldies tapping their satellite arrays
with walking sticks to get the signals in line with earth coordinates.
Because they often stay on the road for years, nomads carry
enough gear to keep going far beyond bowsers, mechanics and doctors. Some, like the Sugarcity Pioneers from Mackay
travel in convoys. Insurance companies
aren’t keen on covering travelers who may not pass all the cemeteries they see
before getting home, so mutual help is essential.
‘RV Friendly’ signs are slowly getting pegged outside
progressive country towns where the local worthies read the stats: the rest are
still grousing about interstate plates cluttering favourite parking
places; like Peter Dutton’s asylum
seekers, you never know what diseases they’re carrying or perversions they
practice.
Local government in the RV unfriendlies tends to be in the
hands of luddite hoteliers. Like taxis
getting overtaken by Uber, they see threats, not opportunities. Following Donald Trump they blacken outsiders
with lurid tales of the bush befouled and ratepayers’ facilities trashed.
The rejects love adverbs; nothing is just ‘prohibited’ – it
must be ‘strictly’. Along with Singapore,
they become ‘fine’ towns with a penalty
for every offence mean minds can imagine.
A favourite sign made failure to flush a urinal an offence. You wouldn’t want to take the piss out of the
police.
For these envious unwelcomers, camper are hoons in panel vans
intent on sex and surf and with no interest in the bowling club bar. Freeloaders must be banned, forgetting even
the unshaven have to fill tanks, buy bread, cask wine and phone cards
A favourite rural myth has foreigners evacuating their
bowels in botanical gardens and washing their undies with the water
lilies. Maybe there’s been the odd
offender but the even truth is that most treat the environment as they would
their lounge.
Having driven from Carnarvon on the West Coast to Carnarvon
in Central Queensland the only sight of what seemed to be toilet paper desecrating
the New England landscape turned out to be
snow.
It’s equally easy to misjudge the grey nomads. Their fashion is more Salvos than Myer. Labourers’ boots and tatty shorts for the
blokes, track suits for their partners.
This is not a market for Revlon but it is for Mercedes.
Whatever
the superannuants aren’t spending on themselves they’re lavishing on their
mobile homes which can often cost six figures.
According to industry stats more than $8 billion was spent on caravans
and camping in 2015, a 24 per cent jump from four years earlier.
Geraldton,
about 420 kilometers north of Perth
is a ‘RV Friendly’ town, unusual for a sizeable city. It lets caravaners stay free
overnight in the CBD, reasoning this encourages longer stays and an emptying of
wallets.
Grouchtowns
get blacklisted in seconds through the campers’ networks. Nomads don’t grin and bear; with wheels and
wanderlust there’s no need to stay and tolerate illwill. Campers come from all points of the continent
and even a few from overseas. They are as socially connected as their
grandkids.
Many
would vomit if called greenies though they’re deeply into the environment, keen
to see what they never knew in their youth – Aboriginal art, protecting
endangered wildflife, studying natural remedies - conservation of the endangered,
The politicians who learn to link with this legion of wised-up wanderers could learn how the
electorate is changing.\
First published in Pearls and Irritations 24 June 2019; http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-roaming-for-relevance/
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