Jonas B

Caravan Park - Terrible service and hostile managers

I've been coming to camp at Salt Rock Caravan Park since 2012. When I met my wife in 2017 it became our spontaneous escape destination of choice. We love the lifestyle. The chats with neighboring sites about refurbishments to their caravans, tips and tricks, 4x4 repair hacks & off the beaten path adventures. It's always brought us such joy. This weekend was, to my absolute astonishment, nothing like that. Right from our arrival, the management staff were rude at best. We arrived 3 hrs before our check in schedule and the lady at the front desk opened up with a lecture about arrival times. Taken aback by this I immediately apologized and said I was happy to pay additional money if need be and that we had just made good time in getting there. She begrudgingly let us in early after it became clear that there was no one on our site (or any site in our immediate vicinity for that matter). Saturday was my 39th birthday and at around 9am we had a friend of mine arrive with his 4yr old son and join us for breakfast after paying the day visitors fee. An hour later our 2nd day visitors arrived (bear in mind we had collectively booked 4 sites with a 5th site being taken that day, no site had more than 3 people on it (6 is the max allowed per site) and between all sites combined there was at this stage 1 day visitor and a child). It was at this point that things went from a little uncomfortable with the management to absolutely absurd. A friend called me saying that management was denying him, his wife and 2 daughters (aged 4 and 6) entry at the reception desk. Not understanding what the problem was, I went up to the office to see if I could clear things up. Once there I was told that we would not be allowed any visitors as this constituted breaking the rules as we were having a party and that I had basically tried to dupe them into throwing some kind of giant event that was so clearly against the rules. It's worth clarifying that there was no music playing, or drinking taking place at this time and at no stage during the entire weekend was there a single complaint from any of the other sites about us. We'd intentionally chosen a site far away from neighbors as we know that the occasional kid crying can be a disturbance and worked hard to ensure that we treated the grounds with the same respect we had for years gone by. However, management claimed that because all 4 sites were now congregating on my site under 1 gazebo it was now a ‘party’. The whole affair was handled awfully with little attempt to see reason by the management who then spent a good part of the remainder of the day blatantly staring down at our site from the office window as if waiting for us to step out of line. Who knows what they were looking for but it felt oppressive and belittling. We were treated like a bunch of drunk college kids who were hell bent on getting up to no good as opposed to young families dealing with entertaining toddlers and an almost constant north easterly wind (which if you've ever camped at salt rock you know is no fun on the forward plots) . I'm not one to write bad reviews. But I also think people should know what they're getting into. And with the new management at Salt rock Caravan Park what you're getting into is being spoken to like a child, berated for things they ‘think’ you might do and having your day ruined because they cannot tell the difference between a group of late 30 somethings and their babies enjoying a day at the beach at 9.30 in the morning and a college house party. I'm bitterly disappointed at how the whole situation was handled by the management, the lady at reception in particular. And after so many years and cherished memories at that caravan park, I think it'll take a lot to get me to ever go back again. Clearly if you aren't a retired caravan owner in your late 60s you are no longer the target market for this still beautiful but terribly managed property.