CAMPSITE # 23 - Butts back in Tumut

It was back to Tumut we go. As much as we hate feeling like we’re travelling backwards, our little power adaptor thingo for the laptop would be ready to be collected the next day and we had spotted a lovely caravan park in town upon our last visit.

Tumut Caravan Park, while a little on the pricey side ($26 per night for a powered site) was set amongst a lot of natural greenery, really well manicured lawns and right on the river. And riddled with Grey Nomads! It’s quite funny as we continue along how all of the Grey Nomads seem to be so taken by Tom. They’re always keen to stop and have a chat to him about the weather, his fishing, where we’re travelling next & querying what part of Sweden he’s from... the two flags on the back windows next to our surnames – one obviously being the Aussie flag and the other being Tom’s English Flag – the St George’s flag. God it’s embarrassing how many Aussies have no idea what flag that is and somehow their colour blindness takes over and they swap the red & white for blue & yellow and assume he’s Swedish.

Grey Nomads are funny creatures. I’ve found you have three main types –


Grey Nomad Type #1 – Snore by day, Snore by night.
In their retro caravans, snug in their little habit, they rarely come out to soak in the atmosphere, cook dinner in their in-caravan microwaves and are snoring away by 8pm.


Grey Nomad Type # 2 – The booze hounds
A bottle or three each night, the two of them could talk up a storm, with each other or their neighbours or even the resident gardener, every single night providing they have wineglass & cheese platters in hand. Everything is an absolute adventure and they’ve hit their 60’s and decided “right love, it’s time to get amongst it and live a little”.


Grey Nomad Type # 3 – The plotters
They just plot along at their own little pace not really bothered by anyone else, just keep to themselves. These are usually the ones with the bloody noisy dogs.


Regardless of which group they fall under, they all seem to have a really lovely nature. The unspoken camping code is really shining through in all of the people we meet at our sites. An ideal camper, who always abides by the code -

• Always greets others with a genuine hello and a light conversation
• Doesn’t slam their doors late at night or clang their dishes around early in the morning
• Doesn’t camp on top of you even if it’s the next best spot
• Generously passes on their leftover firewood / milk / fresh food / drinking water if no longer required
• Ready & willing to assist in mechanical dramas, even if they have no idea


Before this trip, I’d never really escaped the ‘daily grind’ and stepped away from life as a city slicker. People in the city don’t give a damn about anybody else they don’t know. They’re too busy living their fast paced lives and don’t seem to stop to appreciate the smaller things. I’m not saying yay for every countryman and boo for every city slicker, it’s more about the fact that in the country things are just at a different pace and if you say hello to a random in the street, majority of them will gladly give you a genuine hello in return. Why do we get like that in the city? I guess, if we stopped to greet every passerby we’d never actually get to where we’re going.


All in all, Tumut was a lovely town with nice & polite people. However, by the end of our overnight stay at the caravan park, we were pretty ready to move on and head towards our next adventure, Kosciuszko National Park . Tom’s determined to climb Mt Kosciuszko... god help me!!!