How may years does it take for a tourist to become a local?
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Eden caravan parks are packed to the brim over Christmas with “local tourists” coming back year after year. In fact some have been visiting Eden for as long as they can remember.
Eden caravan parks are places where friendships, childhood memories, and sometimes even marriages are made.
Chris Gatt, 24 has grown up visiting the Garden of Eden Caravan Park every summer with his family for more than 18 years.
Sitting surrounded by fishing gear, nets, baits, buckets and a pair of flippers at the entrance of his two-man tent, Chris recalls his earliest fishing memories were made here in Eden.
“I caught my first ever fish here, fishing off the rocks with my Dad at Lennards Island. Although it wasn’t much chop, it was just a wrasse,” Chris says.
The fish might not have been “catch of the day” but there was a time when Chris did make it into the local paper - The Eden Magnet.
“There was a gang of us all riding our bikes we were flying down one of the Eden hills when the boy in front of me suddenly slammed on his brakes. I went flying. My helmet broke. I still have the scar.”
Down the hill in the unpowered sites, Sydney couple Jenny and Gary Boreland kick back in their deck chairs under the shade of their canvas annex tarp. The recent downpour has kept them here a few days longer.
“Can’t pack up wet,” says Gary, “but really we don’t mind, it’s always hard to leave. Another few days won’t hurt.”
From Melbourne, the Borelands chose Eden as the designated "try-out" meeting point between Sydney and Melbourne for catching up with family 30 years ago.
As is the way with cararvan parks, they also made friends with the their temporary neighbours camped around them. However once the annexes were packed up and camper trailers towed away, summer friends were usually stored away along with the deck chairs they sat on.
This wasn’t the case with the Borelands. It turns out their temporary neighbours were closer than they could possibly imagine.
“We’d met a couple, Craig and Ange here, we’d see them here every year, we knew they lived in Melbourne but we never asked where. One day we were visiting my elderly parents in Melbourne. And there they were, they’d seen our car parked out the front.”
“They thought we were stalking them,” Gary adds jokingly.
“We’d known them six years before we found out they lived three doors down from Mum and Dad,” Jenny says.
“Now they keep an eye on Mum for us and we’re close friends. It’s something you wouldn’t dream of happening. It’s a small world.”
Small world indeed.
Around the corner, Marinka and Gary Deering from Hurtsbridge in Victoria are busily preparing their site for Gary’s 60th birthday bash. Colourful streamers and silver balloons decorate camp clotheslines and annexes. Friends are beginning to arrive through the gaps in the closely pegged up tents and caravans.
“We’re always crowded on this site,” says Marinka as she prepares the hamburger mix for the day's barbecue.
“We’ve been coming here for 15 years and coincidentally enough so have our friends from around the corner in Hurtsbridge.”
Marinka says when they first discovered Eden they found it to be such a paradise that word spread and friends and family joined in too.
“We’ve made so many fond memories, kids chasing lizards, collecting crabs in buckets, prawning in the lake. It’s such a wonderful place and now we share it with our grandkids.”
A few kilometres down the road at Eden’s Discovery Caravan Park, grandkids have just arrived at the French/Baker site.
“They're a little bit excited,” says Wendy Baker as kids pop in and out of the families’ “big top” tarp.
The common meeting place is the lounge room of the camp. Newspaper crosswords, half read novels and magazines are strewn across the plastic table.
During their annual three-week stay, the French/Baker clan from Sale in Victoria gather here of a night to chatter, play board games or a round of cards. It’s been that way ever since they can remember.
Cousins Louie Baker and Cheryl French first came here with their parents as kids more than 35 years ago. Needless to say countless card games have been dealt, drawn and won. An ongoing favourite is 500.
“One year we played 500 for so long, over a few nights, and we couldn’t get a winner,” Cheryl remembers.
“So we put the score card in a plastic bag and buried it under the site post. We dug it up the next year and kept playing.”
All up the French/Baker clan make a huge group currently consisting of six families. New additions have come in over the years and some new members first joined in Eden.
“One of our cousins met his wife here at this park, but that was ages ago – we’ve been coming here a long time,” says Louie.
When asked whether "a long time" is long enough to be local, Louie laughs.
“Well at the Fishermen's Club we are.”