NSW: Caravan park enthusiasts keep coming back

AAP General News (Australia)
12-12-2001
NSW: Caravan park enthusiasts keep coming back

By Wade O'Leary

SYDNEY, Dec 12 AAP - What is it that drives some holidaymakers to return to the same
caravan park year after year and generation after generation?

Kathy Marles, a PhD student at Queensland's Griffith University, has spent two and
a half years researching an answer.

Ms Marles said her study indicated that despite having a broad choice of where to stop,
most caravanners tended to not only keep returning to the same park but often insisted
on exactly the same spot.

"A caravan is a mobile thing and you'd expect people to use it with that in mind, but
they're forgoing that mobility to get something extremely stable," she said.

Ms Marles said families often became so attached to "their" caravan park that they
developed a sense of ownership - not always a good thing for proprietors and fellow holiday-makers.

The ritual of constantly coming back to the same spot was also tied up with the rituals
of Christmas, she added.

While obsessive caravanning is just as common in Britain, where hordes of English holiday-makers
descend on southern Wales, summer holidays in Australia coincide with one of the two biggest
days on the Christian calendar.

Ms Marles said the excitement of a caravan holiday was amplified by the sentiment attached
to Christmas.

"It's consistent with the idea of rituals around Christmas time, so it's about reflections
and memories and all that stuff," she said.

"If you have a good stay the first time and you keep returning, you build up an emotional
attachment with the place and to the people in that place."

For the record, Ms Marles never holidayed in a caravan as a child.

Her dog-loving father couldn't take his puppies into the parks and a career in tourism
launched her curiosity about the peculiarly 20th century leisure activity of caravanning.

The study is expected to help tourism bodies plan for the future, especially with the
likely jump in domestic "road" tourism this summer due to September 11 and the collapse
of Ansett.

Second and third-generation caravanners are encouraged to get in touch via e-mail at
k.marles@mailbox.gu.edu.au.

AAP wo/jjs/ldj/de

KEYWORD: CARAVAN

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