Do you have a favorite holiday destination, a place where you’d love to spend your next vacation? I wouldn’t even be surprised to hear that you have many such places in mind, after all we live in an amazingly beautiful and diverse country.
It’s also no secret that money can put a major break on our dreams, simply because there’s never enough of it, and a holiday house is rarely on top of people’s priority lists.
But for those of you who can think outside the box, there is a way of owning a holiday home for a fraction of the price. What is it? Renting a site in a caravan park on annual basis.
Some of you may dismiss this idea right away. When I just arrived in Australia some friends invited my partner and I to a holiday in cottages in a beautiful place, and on the way back we were passing a caravan park. “What if we rent a cabin and just live here for a while?” said my partner, “just imagine being able to fish in this creek every day!”. The friends replied “Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND?! Only homeless live in caravan parks.”
But as time went by we were going to different locations on holidays, and since we love camping, many of these places were caravan parks. And I saw that our friends were wrong to see caravan parks in such a bad light. In fact 90% of the places we’ve been to were kept in a very good condition, neat, clean and tidy, safe and secure, and looking cozy.
And we saw many people who came to established sites where a caravan was parked permanently and an annex was attached to it, to add some extra space, and they were just normal Aussie families with kids, hardworking people who love to spend a holiday in the same great place year after year, to give the kids something to look forward to and to just take the stress of planning, booking and packing out of the vacation.
When a family vacation is something that rarely happens, it is quite normal to have many expectations attached to it – they just build up while people are waiting and anticipating. And if anything goes wrong, the vacation is ruined and people and their children may get so disappointed that they find it hard to go back to the routine life, work, studies, and so on.
But when you rent a caravan / cabin in a caravan park on annual basis, it’s yours for the whole year or at least a large part of the year. You can spend a weekend there any time you like, which automatically transforms your vacations schedule from once a year to a much more frequent one. And then you have a chance to “recharge your batteries” more often and at the same time there is no expectations from each vacation to be perfect because it stops being an extraordinary event in your family life.
Another great thing about renting a site or a cabin in a caravan park annually is the possibility to choose a different park when you feel like trying something new. When kids are little and thrive on certainty, they prefer to go to a familiar place year after year, but when they grow up they may get tired of the same holiday destination over and over again.
If you like the idea of renting an annual site in a caravan park, don’t miss my next article where I will describe everything that’s involved in detail, with approximate prices, rules, tips and questions to think about.
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