How Victoria’s free camping policy came unstuck

“There’s a high degree of frustration. You get there, and there are these sites that just aren’t utilised whereas typically, it’s very rare, it’s very hard to get a site,” said camper Roger Verwey.

This has led to the bizarre situation where despite a spike in camp bookings, adventure gear shop Rooze has actually had a fall in last-minute bookings for family tents.

“Take Wilsons Prom, for example,” said director Jason Polson. “When you look at the Facebook groups – and I’ve been studying this every day – the people on the ground, the campers, they are saying there’s spots everywhere.”

Parks Victoria’s acting executive director of visitor experience, Jenny Hunter, said the program was a success, and the agency had “introduced a range of new measures to encourage people to cancel their booking if they decide not to go camping”.

But Professor Nitika Garg, a consumer behaviour expert at the University of NSW, says the government “should have seen it coming”.

“When the booking is made free, there’s no downside to making it and not keeping it,” she said.

“Essentially, your intentions can be vague but because there’s zero cost, it doesn’t hurt to act on them and assume that you would be able to go ahead with the behaviour at a later date.

“Most of us are inaccurate in predicting our future behaviours and when these are infrequent and carry little – or zero, as in this case – cost, the gap between intentions and behaviour is high. This is what we see in this example.”

Many of the no-shows were likely caused by the hot, unpredictable weather and bushfires that had bookended 2024, said Jordan Crook, parks and nature campaigner at the Victorian National Parks Association.

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“People don’t want to put themselves in hot, bothered, dangerous situations.”

But he and other campers report the spike in camping is straining Parks Victoria’s ability to run parks and keep the system flowing smoothly.

“Toilet blocks are being closed, areas cut off, and now suddenly there’s free camping. There’s massive problems. And with hardly any park rangers to monitor the people,” said camper Prue Hasler.

David Williams has been trying for weeks to cancel a booking he made at Cooks Mill Campground but Parks Victoria’s website can’t seem to handle the task. “We can’t cancel that booking. So it’s going to sit there and no one can use it.”

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Solutions

Many of the campers who spoke to The Age applauded the intent of the policy – it was just a matter of getting the implementation right, they said.

Some suggested rangers could patrol booked sites and charge people who failed to show up.

Others suggested the fee could simply be low, so people were still paying something.

But some said they were happy to pay the normal fee, knowing it helped contribute to the upkeep of Victoria’s national parks.

“There’s a downward trend in their funding. They get a pitiful amount of money anyway,” said Crook.

“This is really killing the goose that laid the golden egg – or at least removing the people who are looking after the goose.”

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