I’m awarding Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park as the winner of Escape the City’s hastily created “Worst Caravan Park/Campsite Award”.

Every country has it’s bad caravan park and campsites; France and Italy have more than their fair share. On the whole, the campsites in Australia have been above par: cleaner than average bathrooms, reasonable camp kitchens, outdoor barbeque areas and perhaps even an air-conditioned TV room for saps like us to escape the heat. It was all going so well until we checked-in to Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park.

The photograph of the overflowing rubbish bin is not a stock photograph taken from an anonymous source on the Internet. It’s a photograph I took of the actual kitchen bin at the Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park camp kitchen at about nine o’clock in the morning. Why is the bin like this? Simple: there’s a total fire ban in the state meaning that nobody can cook on gas at their pitch and only a single, undersized and under provisioned camp kitchen to share between the 140 pitches at this monster site (there’s actually over 600 pitches(!), but many of these will have their own kitchens). There’s a single consumer-style free-standing fridge/freezer to share too, so fat chance of getting any food in there either. The other facilities fare little better: there are a number of toilet/shower blocks around the site to distribute the high foot-traffic. It’s just a shame that they’re so dirty. Why? There are no bins, meaning that empty soap-wrappers and shampoo bottles litter the shower cubicles. And when were the grimy tiled floors last cleaned [properly]? The cushions on the sofas in the TV room were strewn across the floor when I walked past. This room had been made even less inviting by the wall-to-wall line of noisy coin-operated games machines. The first pitch in which we were allocated was already had a car parked in it; no doubt because my neighbour’s pitch wasn’t big enough to house it along with his tent. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Ok, just one more. I showed my kitchen bin photograph to the man at reception and elicited a “that’s disgusting!” response, just before he returned to his day job.

I can’t argue with the location of the site–it’s close to the beach–but alone that’s just not good enough, given the high asking price and the mismanagement. The reception clerks seemed nice enough, but just shrugged when I asked them–given the total fire ban (including camping gas stoves)–whether they honestly expected hundreds of people to happily share one cooker in the cramped camp kitchen. “I guess the last owner was a bit greedy”, was the best they could muster when pushed. So the last owner was greedy, but what’s the current owner doing about it? “There have been plans for a new camp kitchen now for a while. It’ll probably take four years or so…”

Yes folks, this is purely selfish profiteering at it’s very best. The poster at reception indicates that the site does not give refunds; seems I’m not the first person to be fooled by the glitzy exterior. I’m spreading the word: Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park sucks — there are two others nearby, so try those instead.