Residents say they are fed up with “irresponsible” owners parking caravans, boats, trailers and recreational vehicles in quiet suburban streets — sometimes for months on end.
They say the vehicles clogging up the roads are an ongoing eyesore and represent potential traffic hazards.
The worst-hit streets appear to be in older suburbs near new estates like Aura and Bokarina Beach which have narrower streets and smaller blocks and where parking is at a premium.
Some of the offenders are absentee vehicle owners who “setdown and forget” their toys in on-street parking away from their place of business or residence. Others use the streets intermittently at their convenience on weekends and holiday periods.
The free parking avoids storage costs – no matter how affordable – in designated facilities such as Bionic Storage at Landsborough, where storing a caravan outdoors is about $170 a month.
Caravans, boats and trailers parked along the 500m length of Wurley Drive, which separates the more established Wurtulla Beach and new Bokarina Beach development, has been the “talk of the town” in Oceanic Drive and surrounding streets.
Long-time Wurtulla Beach resident Matt Phillips said the number of large recreational vehicles and trailers calling Wurley Drive ‘home’ had increased as more people moved into the new Bokarina Beach houses, high-rise units and townhouses.
Many had ‘waited out’ the COVID-19 pandemic on the road and now had no room for vehicles on their properties or were yet to sell them.
Once one person parked their vehicle there, ‘copycats’ followed until a stream of up to 10 caravans, boats and trailers could be counted at various times.
Last weekend, residents counted five caravans, two trailers and one boat on a trailer.
“Some have been parked there for months,” Mr Phillips said.
“They reduce visibility significantly, making it difficult for drivers, bike riders, scooters and pedestrians to negotiate their thoroughfare on what is already a dangerous corner/intersection because drivers ignore the ‘No entry’ sign and wipe out the ‘Keep left’ sign on a regular basis.
“Some of those caravans appear to belong to a rental company – probably avoiding paying for their storage.”
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Chris Houley, who is visiting family from Western Australia, said he was shocked at the number of caravans parked on residential streets on the Coast.
“Since growing up in Wurtulla, living in four different states over the past 10 years and travelling Australia full time in my caravan for the past 18 months, this is one of the worst places I’ve seen for caravans parked in residential street parking across all of my travels,” he said.
“I would think the council should have some regulations about parking in the same spot for month after month without ever being moved.
“As a fellow caravan owner, the done thing is to pay for caravan storage if there is no room on your property.
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“And now with a caravan hire company parking multiple caravans there during the week, it’s a joke and unfair to all the people doing the right thing.”
The problem is likely to continue into the near future, however, with the popularity of caravans and camper trailers far from waning.
A spokesperson for Bushtracker Australia, which has been supplying factory direct caravans and camper trailers, spare parts and service from its office in Enterprise Street, Kunda Park, for 27 years, confirmed it had orders backed up for about two years.
Those orders represented dozens of new vehicles.
“Most (similar businesses) have got a fairly decent back order at the moment,” the spokesman said.
“It’s starting to slow down now – a bit like the housing market.”
A Sunshine Coast Council spokesperson said the council was responsible for regulating parking in accordance with the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1995, the Transport Operations (Road Use Management—Road Rules) Regulation 2009 and its Local Laws. Drivers must park lawfully, safely and consider other road users and pedestrians when parking their vehicle.
Caravans, boats and trailers were considered a vehicle and a registered vehicle was allowed to park on a road.
The spokesperson said there was no limit to the time in which a caravan, boat or trailer could be parked, unless a parking control sign was in place, indicating a time limit. Where a time limit applied, vehicles could not overstay the time period.
Where council received a parking complaint, officers investigated to determine if any non-compliance existed, they said.
The council would educate motorists through the provision of factsheets and caution notices to first-time offenders.
The council gives these extra tips for parking in residential streets:
- All four wheels of a motor vehicle must be on the road surface.
- Drivers must provide three metres of clearance from any part of the vehicle to allow other traffic to pass.
- A driver must not park a heavy or long vehicle for more than one hour in a built-up area unless the vehicle is delivering goods or providing services to the area. A heavy vehicle is defined as a vehicle with a Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) of over 4.5 tonnes (includes load). A long vehicle is defined as a vehicle and/or trailer that is longer than 7.5 metres.
