CAMPSITE # 114 - Thieving little buggers

As much as the locals may disagree with us, we actually liked Mandurah. Ask anyone in Perth however and they'll tell you they think "it's a hole". We were a little puzzled as to why, the well presented town centre ran along the waterfront which was teaming with watersports and sporting events, sunshine was out in full force and we felt as though we could easily find a nice quaint little caravan park near the waterfront and nestle into this little town for a few days.

Tom almost wet his pants when he spotted the Spur Steak restaurant along the Mandurah Esplanade. Spur is apparently really popular in South Africa and Tom used to go there as a child and come home with an Indian headpiece and a free colouring-in book. While the $38 steaks were out of our budget, we found some room in the budget to share a $15 plate of nachos.  No headpiece this time though (thankfully!!)

Our excitement for staying in Mandurah was short lived, once we were forced to head inland in search of a caravan park. The first park we found, and the closest to the lovely Esplanade we had visited just 1km down the road was nothing short of a trailer park. We decided to do a loop around the caravan park, and desperately hoped that it was much better than what our first impressions led us to believe. A wave of sadness overcame us both as we drove in through the entrance and saw the massive amounts of fresh flowers and gifts all gathered together at the front of the driveway. There were notes and messages pinned to the chicken wire fence and the same faces repeatedly appearing in the photos displayed. The penny finally dropped, we had arrived at the Caravan Park where the young family of three had been killed just the week beforehand when a gas bottle exploded at their campsite. We had heard news of it on the radio but never really stopped to listen to where it had happened. We both fell silent and kept on driving. 


Mandurah had left a bad taste in our mouth. We had agreed that we no longer cared about where we were staying that night, we just wanted to be staying somewhere. Somewhere that we could just pull up and do nothing for two days and wait out the terrible stormy weather that was heading our way. It felt as though we were driving aimlessly in some pathetic hope that we would stumble across the caravan park of our dreams - cheap, cosy and with homely facilities. If our past experiences were anything to go by, it certainly wasn't going to be a Big4 but I think our enthusiasm had dwindled and we just bit our tongues and coughed up the $32 for an unpowered site...

Site : Woody Point Big4 Caravan Park
Rating : 7 / 20
Facilities : Big camp kitchen with full kitchen facilities but has a very refrectory / canteen feeling to it. Free electric BBQs. 10minutes walk to the beach & jetty. Overpriced - $32 for an unpowered site, would have cost us $40 if we went for a powered site.


You know there are real problems with thieves in the area when a caravan park has "Thieves don't have holidays too" signs plastered everywhere. We are always very particular about making sure we lock everything away every night anyhow so we weren't too concerned. This was until Tom slept through the night time fishing he was going to do and left his rods out ready and waiting for him. Instead, they were ready and waiting for some sneaky little bastard to come along and nick them while we were sleeping right inside the Troopie. Tom was, and still is, shattered. No doubt if we went straight to the local Cash Converters that morning we could have bought his rods back for 1/3 of the price they were actually worth but, we didn't. Tom couldn't possibly have that kind of negativity hanging on the end of his rod. It was time to get a new rod... and time to tie them up every night before bed!!


It made my skin crawl when I went to reception upon check out and just mentioned that our rods were stolen. I knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about it but I figured surely they would at least keep track of the large amounts of theft in their park that they chose to do absolutely nothing about. Her response really irritated me as she proceeded to insinuate that it was our fault they were stolen because we didn't lock them up. Yes, we should have locked them up but perhaps she could have stopped for a moment to consider that perhaps the fault should have been laid on the Son of a Cowboy that pinched them in the first place! Grrrr stupid thieving little buggers, what goes around comes around my friend!!!