Backpacker crisis hits NSW: Locals fuming as carparks and parks are turned into messy campgrounds

Dozens were still camped out at Federal Park in Annandale yesterday, many sitting and eating breakfast on footpaths and impeding joggers and walkers trying to get through the illegal camp site.

People could be seen brushing their teeth in the parks toilet block, washing their faces in the drinking fountain and lounging around amongst the rubbish left strewn around the park.

The nomadic community of foreign backpackers freeloading in carparks across Sydney is taking advantage of lazy councils who issued just 33 fines for illegal camping last year.

An investigation by The Saturday Telegraph this week uncovered a number of campervan embassies, some with sweeping ocean views, where international vacationers have been living for free for months.

The largely European set who call themselves boondockers use Sydney water to bathe, charge their electronic gadgetry with power from the city grid and eat their meals at elaborate table settings on footpaths and in parks.

They brush their teeth in the open and use bushes as toilets.

Frustrated locals are competing for space in their own suburbs. One Annandale mother is regularly forced to push a pram with her 18-month-old twins on the road because the footpaths are so clogged.

I decided to walk through them (on Thursday), perhaps to annoy them. Its more convenient for me and I wanted to make a stand, said Donnah Soo, who had to move a picnic table as backpackers watched on.

Theyre not respectful that theres other people using the area. Over the last two weeks its been building up. Its very frustrating.

Ms Soo, a midwife, said she could not let her kids enjoy the nearby park or playground due to the alcohol bottles and used condoms left over after raucous parties.

The dogleg-shaped carpark sits in Federal Park, behind a Webbers Carpet Warehouse and a pet store on Chapman Street.

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The Saturday Telegraph counted more than 60 backpacker vans and an itinerant population of more than 100.

It is painful, Webbers owner Mark Webber said.

Ive had customers even call us and say, Im out the front, theres no parking, can you come and take a deposit?

Surely council have got to pull their heads out of their arses and do something because nobody else can use the park.

The carpark and the streets in the immediate vicinity features unmetered and unrestricted parking. Backpackers are allowed to stay as long as they like in their vans without breaking the law.

A City of Sydney official last night said the council would introduce timed parking within the next two months to curb the problem.

In response to complaints from residents and businesses about long-term stay parking, the City is introducing two-hour parking in the Chapman St area, she said.

Under the NSW Local Government Act its not against the law to sleep or live in a vehicle on a street, as long as its legally parked.

The Saturday Telegraph, however, witnessed a number of travellers sleeping in tents and camping in the adjacent reserve. Some were seen urinating in bushes, others using tree branches as clothes lines. One German boasted he had been living there for two months.

Despite regular patrols by rangers, an Office of State Revenue spokeswoman revealed there were only 33 fines issued for offences related to camping in prohibited (public) areas across the state last year. The City of Sydney was unable to say how many they issued.

Backpackers use websites and smartphone applications such as WikiCamp to share locations around Sydney where they can sleep free.

Many coastal councils have clamped down on the nomads by introducing restricted parking and increasing ranger patrols.

The carpark at Clovelly Beach despite featuring no camping or staying overnight signs remains a hotbed for thrifty voyagers.

A local walks her dog through the rubbish-lined carpark. Picture: John GraingerBackpackers use the parks vegetation as a toilet. Picture: John Grainger

The makeshift caravan park features uninterrupted ocean views. A British backpacker at the site says the vacationers refer to the act of camping free as boondocking.

And theyre proud of it.

There arent a lot of campgrounds around Sydney and a lot of backpackers will have spent all their money on their van, he said.

They dont want to go and pay another 60 bucks per night. I think its a genuine problem when people are leaving rubbish.

One website provides instructions on staying under the radar in Sydney. It describes a cul-de-sac next to Macquarie Park cemetery as the best place to freeload.

A group of youths living out of vans were earlier discovered at a park in Tempe. Many were bathing in the open and using the local flora as a laundry.

Marrickville Council said they were not breaking any laws and in a statement added: Number of fines issued in past few years is zero.

HELL ON WHEELS By Taylor Auerbach

IN letters the size of watermelons, next to a portrait of author George Orwell, a quote is cartooned along the portside sliding door of the Mitsubishi van whose next service is due at 274,000km.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Its rear hatch features a breathless adage Love is merely a combination of infatuation and confusion that manages somehow to seem at once romantic and cynical.

What joyous nymphs must have fluttered through these two gateways, their excitement massaged by sunsets and sunrises across the Australian continent as they climbed behind the literature.

I am looking at a van reserved exclusively for the use of backpackers. This is a brand of vehicle unique in the ranks of things often referred to as people movers.

Designed to carry pipes and tools, it has undergone a radical transformation and now carries pipes and tools.

Too practical to be a piece of art and not practical enough to be a caravan, it is, unmistakably, a Wicked campervan.

To open a Wicked campervan is to water ones eyes. The unique multi-sensory experience accorded by the unlatching of the door is a phenomenon not easily forgotten.

Firstly, the smell.

To synthesise the experience at home simply pass your nostrils over a ****tail of sweat, bong water, petrol and used kitty litter.

To breathe, sit and sleep in a cocoon of this funk is quite another thing entirely.

Next, the interior design.

It is as if half a dozen year 7 boys were given cans of Red Bull and textas, crammed inside the vehicle and told to give it their best.

There are scribbled limericks that rhyme words with Venus and China. Drawings of the respective poems adorn the tin walls.

One former occupant boasts, as if from the grave: I SMOKE two JOiNTS IN THE MORNiNG.

Another declares proudly 2 girls, 1 van alongside naive diagrams of their busts perhaps explanatory sketches for any non-English speakers who might cast their eyes over the simple memoir.

The bed is a collection of wooden planks and three pieces of foam. The mattresses are thinner than the wallets of anyone who has ever rented this magnificent machine.

And that, as they say, is saying something.

The closest thing to an en suite is a plastic water bottle, which I empty in case of emergency.

Drawers are stocked with jumper leads, pots and pans, cups, cutlery, fold-out chairs and tables, an Esky and a portable gas stove. A full inspection does not take long.

The van, in a very strange way, seems homely ... ish.

And so I find myself well acquainted with my moving bedroom-cum-kitchen-cum-dining room as it pulls into a car park on Chapman Rd, Annandale, on Tuesday.

A row of parallel vans stretches out along the tri-winged carpark servicing a carpet warehouse, a pet shop and a storage facility.

I soon discover this little Europe is divided along state lines.

As if bound by the tidal flow of their blood, the French occupy the south and the Germans the north.

Feeling oddly Swiss, I climb out of the vehicle as Michael, from Montpellier, parks up next to me.

Its me and two girls, he says. One is my girlfriend and the other one is free.

Helpful to know.

I spend the afternoon and twilight strolling back and forth between the gallic and teutonic quarters of Federal Park, where the great unwashed brush their teeth on the grass and in the public toilets.

Some sit around on camping chairs smoking rolled cigarettes. Others eat bowls of cereal. Many nap.

Night-time has fallen on the Harbour City when I attach myself to a circle of French nationals discussing the beasts of Down Under.

Diablo Tasmani? How do you say this? asks Benjamin from Brittany.

Discussion turns to the kookaburra as Michael, sitting next to the free girl and not his girlfriend, says: Your birds are so weird, they look like monkeys.

I tell Michael to be careful as some Australians call women birds.

In France the equivalent colloquialism is hirondelle, or swallow, he explains.

We agree the term is more fitting.

The French offer me a Tim Tam in exchange for a demonstration of the Tim Tam slam an offer impossible to turn down.

One thing you need to know about the French is that when we are drunk we talk about important things like politics or food, says Michael.

I am regaled with stories of showering in BP truck stops along the eastern seaboard, of raids on Aldi supermarkets, of breakdowns and encounters with brown snakes and wombats, and life on the road.

A van, it is like a home, Michael proclaims with a smile and southern French twang.

If I get kicked out of someones house I dont know where to put my stuff.

Here, I just go.

He slaps the tail light of his Toyota as if it was the family poodle.

We retire to our respective wheeled living quarters and fall asleep.

The carpark is quiet like a graveyard when I find myself waking up in sauna-like conditions at 1.30am.

I need to go.

I reach through the dusty darkness and feel for the empty two-litre water bottle.