I have always thought that to show how much we support local communities as we travel, we need to show a united front, how do we do this? I had a thought about how to do this and wanted to ask your opinions on what we could do? My thought was about having our own currency to show where the support was coming from, perhaps a Nomad Token to leave with the payment after spending our real monies to show where we were from, a bit like BITcoin, I'm sure if we asked for support from all involved, we could get the cost of printing these token down to around the cent mark, I myself would be happy to contribute to pay $10.00 for a thousand tokens or similar, it would not take long to use up a thousand tokens I'm sure.
Imagine the impact of leaving a token everywhere you spend your dollars, or don't spend? by leaving a token everywhere we go, we leave no doubt as to who is supporting the local communities, I have posted this thread on the Aussiemotorhome site as well, we need to all get together, how better to show how much impact we have on the aussie tourism industries?
Kevin.
-- Edited by Bucko on Saturday 28th of June 2014 12:15:57 PM
I travel Australia by road and pass through many towns, if I need something when passing through I may stop, however if the towns shops don't look particularly inviting I may not buy anything.
I certainly don't feel a need to announce my status, by passing over a token, membership card or anything else, and as far as the business is concerned my cash is all they are really looking for.
The only impact I can imagine is the impact of a token hitting the bottom of the bin as I walk out the door.
I haven't done any pricing but feel that if there was support, then the CMCA, who have an interest in this site could easily check costing and to Santa, indeed they may throw away one or two token but I'm sure if they kept getting them then they would take notice of them, I'm sure that Nyngan and Monto would notice them and appreciate a noticeable show of support from the very people who so vocally complained about local caravan parks owners trying to change Council regulations in relation to freecamping nomads presence, the outcry from the traveling public in relation to freecamping in the two mentioned areas has been very noticeable, it would be even better with a verifyable way of showing support for these type of situations.
Kevin.
-- Edited by Bucko on Saturday 28th of June 2014 02:07:22 PM
I travel Australia by road and pass through many towns, if I need something when passing through I may stop, however if the towns shops don't look particularly inviting I may not buy anything.
I certainly don't feel a need to announce my status, by passing over a token, membership card or anything else, and as far as the business is concerned my cash is all they are really looking for.
The only impact I can imagine is the impact of a token hitting the bottom of the bin as I walk out the door.
I am in a small town outback Queensland that offers powered sites @ $5 per head. They have a small museum that asks for a $2 donation. I over heard a "Traveller" say I'm not paying $2 to see that. And you think people will fork over $10 for tokens with no return. Actually I would need a lot more than 100 tokens the way Raine likes to shop.
Funny thing about this spot, it has toilet and shower, some people chose to stay free on an unpowered site and run their generator, At $2 a litre it is almost as cheap to pay for power.
If you are not already a member consider joining CMCA.
They are constantly lobbying Councils and State Government re the need to support RV travellers they are active in working with councils to set up RV friendly towns, they have working in conjunction with towns and councils to set up dump points and working hard at all levels of government, to negate the efforts of the caravan park industry who want to do away with all low cost or free camping.
Even if you are not a member of CMCA you still benefit from all the work that is going on in support of all RVers.
I don't think that CMCA have any connection with this forum, though it is possible that quite a few CMCA members post or read this forum.
Cheers
David
Hi Kevin, Your idea might be well intended but to me I spent my previous life fighting red tape, budgeting, forward planning, budgeting, fighting other managers in Local Goverment trying to do the right thing for the local community, I really don't want to be worried about if a community wants my business or not now I am retired and enjoying the playground.
To be honest, I do a daily/weekly journal for myself and a update via email to friends/family and a similar update on this forum. That is enough for me without going to all that bother of a "Nomad Token". Mate, if they don't care about me then I spose too bad, I don't care about them.
Unfortunately, at some stage we might need to buy fuel or something else from a business or similar that don't give a toss about us GN's. In that case I would just get whatever, pay and say thankyou, you have a nice day.
I know you mean well with your idea and I mean no offence to you or others. Just my thoughts.
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I think the bean counter in ABS would have a fair estimate on how much the GN segment distributes around the place. We would come under the tourism category I would suspect.
IMHO we are very efficient at distribution money around all the dusty and forgotten corners of our economy. Unlike other age groups we don't take money overseas we spend it here.
Small towns need to do what it takes to capture the process or miss out as we see in the case of Benalla recently. I don't feel it's incumbent on us to provide evidence of our money trail
it's up to towns and regions to work harder on attracting nomads.
At the small town museums, usually manned by dedicated volunteers, I will make sure that I give them more than the entrance fee, as I appreciate their hard work to provide an attraction for all, regardless of the display.
It was not my intention to indicate a direct interest by the CMCA in this site but their awareness of the topics and comments of nomads in general on the site, my apologies if I confused anyone, I confuse my self sometimes, as Dougwe said, I had generally just went on my own way and said bugger "them", but after seeing the CMCA finally come out and actively defend not only themselves from the "Monto" comments from the Cania gorge CP owner but freecamping in general and doing it very well, which benefits us all, I started to think that there must be more that could be done to support their efforts for the benefit of all, perhaps it is too hard, I'm no rocket scientist when it comes to thinking but would like to think that I didn't just let it go because I didn't give a sh*t, no offence to Doug or anyone else, I'm just sick of the ar*holes in councils who are so easily swayed by the likes of the Caravan park owners into giving away our right to choose or to even having a choice as to where we spend our money, finally we have seen someone hit back and very effectively I might say, maybe it's because I'm nearer to the end of the journey than the beginning, I want have a say in how I finish off my journey.
I am a member of the CMCA and they haven't been brilliant in representing my interest or the interest of the majority of members in the past but are getting better with changes to the board and hopefully the general traveling public will benefit from a better defence of our chosen way of life with minimum red tape intervention.
Perhaps if nothing else, I should support this site, it's about time I bought my "grey Nomad" stickers and I will, it's a start!!
Regards,
Kevin.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"---Edmund Burke
and if you don't think Governments of all kinds aren't evil, then you haven't seen what they do with your money
-- Edited by Bucko on Sunday 29th of June 2014 11:56:54 AM
One of the time honoured ways to evaluate ones 'value' in monetry terms is to save up any dockets from money spent in a town, at the end of your stay you could then drop into the visitor centre or local Council Offices and let them know how much you enjoyed your stay in their town and how much you spent in their town.
For those of us that are aware of the fairly strong lobby from some quarters re freedom of choice camping/low fee camping this will help the Council be aware of the value of having nomads stay overnight in close proximity to the town.
How we evaluate other aspects of our stays especially in the more remote areas such as doing a spot of volunteer work, even actions as simple as having a yarn with some of the more socially isolated people in town, and things like that I do not know, but feel that these actions will in time to come be seen as possibly even more valuable than merely stopping overnight.
Annie
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