When Did Camping Become a Luxury?

I went to book a couple of nights at Baden Powell campground.
State forest. Public land.

No power.
No water.
Long-drop toilets.

Me, Clare, and the three boys. Two nights.

Fifty dollars a night.

I just sat there staring at the screen. Not angry......more puzzled. This wasn’t a resort or a tourist park. It was the bush. The place Australians have always gone when money was tight and life needed slowing down. A tent, a fire, quiet.

Somewhere along the way, that changed.

It’s not the money.....it’s what the price says

I can afford the hundred bucks. That’s not really the point.

The point is what the price signals. It says camping is no longer the baseline. It says the bush isn’t something you simply access anymore. It says even the most stripped-back version of being outdoors has been turned into a paid product.

That feels wrong.....especially when the land is publicly owned.

How we got here (quietly)

This didn’t happen overnight. It crept in while no one was really watching.

Government land managers like Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions are now run less like stewards of shared space and more like service providers.

The thinking is simple - if people use it, they should pay for it. If it costs money, it should recover its costs.

On paper that sounds reasonable. In practice, it means families paying premium prices to sleep on dirt. Camping stopped being access to land and started being an itemised experience.

The argument I had to take seriously

When I raised this at home, Clare pushed back.....and she wasn’t wrong.

Her view was simple - fees keep certain behaviour out.

Littering.
Fire misuse.
Alcohol-fuelled aggression.
The kind of intimidation that makes a woman think twice about camping alone with kids.

From her perspective, paying isn’t about comfort.....it’s about safety and control. And for women, especially single mothers, that fear isn’t theoretical. It’s lived experience.

That matters. A lot.

Where the system goes wrong

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: price does filter behaviour. Not because money makes people better, but because bookings create traceability and consequences.

But price is a blunt tool.....and we’ve started using it to do the wrong job.

We’ve outsourced behaviour management to fees.

That creates a quiet but serious problem:

• Good people get priced out
• Poor people get treated as the risk
• Bad behaviour goes unmanaged once someone has paid

Price becomes a proxy for safety.....and that’s lazy policy.

The part no one likes to talk about: fear and liability

The Australian Government has become deeply risk-averse.

Risk of injury.
Risk of fire.
Risk of litigation.
Risk of headlines.

Rather than accepting that some risk is inherent in giving people access to wild places, the response has been to manage that fear with pricing. Higher fees don’t necessarily mean better services....they mean safer balance sheets.

It’s easier to charge people than to actively manage behaviour.

So instead of removing bad actors, we quietly exclude everyone who can’t afford the gate.

Who this actually hits

Not tourists passing through once.
Not grey nomads with six-figure vans.
Not people who barely notice the charge.

It hits families.

It hits women who would like to take their kids camping, but only if it feels safe.
It hits kids who miss out on simple bush experiences because their parents have to budget hard just to pitch a tent.

That’s how exclusion works now. Not with fences.....with fees.

Safety and access don’t have to be enemies

This is where I’ve landed.

Clare is right to want safety.
I’m right to want equal access.

The problem is pretending those two things can only be solved with money.

They can’t.

Public spaces don’t become safe because they’re expensive. They become safe because rules are clear and enforced.

Price shouldn’t decide who belongs. Behaviour should.

What would actually work better

A fair system would separate access from behaviour.

That could look like:

• Tiered camping - genuinely low-cost or free basic sites, alongside modestly priced, booked family-safe camps
• Clear rules with teeth - fire bans enforced, rubbish penalties real, alcohol abuse dealt with
• Presence, not punishment - occasional ranger or host visibility, not constant policing
• Design that supports safety - smaller sites, clear sightlines, limits on large or rowdy group bookings

In other words... manage the behaviour, not the income.

This isn’t just about camping

Camping just makes it obvious.

The same thinking shows up everywhere else....housing, power, transport, services we say are essential but price like luxuries.

The bush used to be one of the last places where money mattered less. Now even that comes with an entry fee that makes ordinary families hesitate.

The line we should probably draw

I’m not arguing that everything should be free or unmanaged.

I am saying this.... basic access to nature shouldn’t depend on what you can afford....and safety shouldn’t depend on pricing people out.

If public land is only affordable to those who can absorb the cost without thinking, then it isn’t really public anymore. It’s just land we technically own, but practically can’t use.

And that’s a loss worth talking about....honestly, from both sides.