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‘Evicted’ campers promise to fight council ruling
‘Evicted’ campers promise to fight council ruling
By Tim Howard
A Clarence Valley Council edict that will evict campers from popular sites along a section of the waterfront at the popular holiday spot, Brooms Head, is “illegal and immoral” say affected users.
A spokesperson for the Brooms Campers and Caravanners Association, Ken Shephard, said the council decision did not have legal standing because it did not reflect the latest plan of management, ratified in 1998, which described how the park would be managed.
He said that POM was in place and legally remained in place until superseded by the next one.
In November the council passed a motion endorsing a new draft POM and sent it to the Department of Planning to begin seek approval to begin public exhibition of the new plan.
“The council should be following the valid legal POM with its site plan as it currently stands,” he said.
“That continues until the next POM extinguishes the 98 POM and the new POM will have its site plan and your site number and what’s allowed on each site.”
In the draft POM camping in Section B, 24 sites between the road and waters edge and 10 sites further up the hill in section AC, an overflow site, would no longer be available to campers.
Mr Shephard said any attempt to implement measures in the new POM before it was ratified had no legal backing.
Yet this is what Mr Shephard and other campers accuse the council of doing, without consultation with them, or they claim, the Yaegl traditional owners of the land.
Local government has made no bones about wishing to end camping along the waterfront in the park and open up the area to the general public for general recreation.
In 1987 the Maclean Shire Council, in a confidential meeting, released a minute that would extinguish foreshore camping rights to 16 sites – 14 between the boat ramp and the Dolphin Shed and two on the bluff.
The rights would be lost in a process of attrition as so-called “traditional users” ceased to use the sites.
These users had been able to pass on rights to camp on these sites to other family members, passing down generations, but the 1987 minute ended that.
But mentioning the 1987 decision raises the hackles of the current campers.
Mr Shephard said the 1987 decision had nothing to do with the 34 sites the council targeted in its draft POM.
He said the 98 POM extinguished the 1987 minute and incorporated the 16 sites it referred to.
“In 2021 those 16 sites – there was only 13 left by then, because other people had been “attritioned off” – were removed by council,” he said.
“They said we’re no longer making them available from that Christmas period in 21, so they already removed them.”
Heather Hanson (nearly 88) is Neil Foster’s wife’s mother and has camped at Brooms Head for nearly all those years. When they came out in an old truck, with the wood stove and canvas tents. She is pictured with her great grandchild Luka, marking five generations of camping at Brooms for the family.
Mr Shephard said campers could live with this decision.
“All right, they’ve taken the land from the boat ramp back to the dolphin shed as community land,” he said.
“Right that’s about half the foreshore on this southern end, I should say. And we’ve got the other half as campers.”
But on December 13, a Friday, the council, sent letters to the campers who had booked foreshore sites that as of May 7, 2025 they were effectively “evicted” from those sites.
Council’s general manager Laura Black said as the responsible manager for the park, council needed to act.
“The movement of large vehicles in such a pedestrian-heavy zone, along with issues related to wastewater disposal, have raised safety and environmental concerns,” she said.
“Complaints from residents and day-trippers about these impacts were frequent until the recent decision to remove sites along the foreshore, was made and communicated.
Ms Black said camping has changed to a point where it was no longer desirable to have modern camping sites close to the water’s edge.
“Over time, camping on the foreshore has evolved,” she said. “Council made the decision to reduce the availability of these sites as part of an approach to ultimately phase out camping in this location.
“This decision responds to community concerns about overcrowding and large vehicles encroaching on public access to the much-loved beach and foreshore areas.
“Council resolved to inform regular campers who had enjoyed exclusive access to these beachfront sites for generations that changes were coming.
She said in August 2021 a report in the council business paper identified the council had maintained foreshore camping beyond the intention of the Maclean Shire Council 1987 decision.
“While overdue, we have been implementing that decision since 2021,” Ms Black said.
But Mr Shephard took issue with some of the council’s arguments around grey water causing environmental damage, site sizes being too small and safety.
“There is no grey water issue,” he said. “There’s no health issues because of the grey water, because council themselves have fixed that problem. So they can’t trot that out.”
He said all the sites were big enough to allow caravans according to current regulations, which stipulated 65 sq metres as the minimum site size.
“So all these 34 sites, and I have got it in writing, because we all received emails evicting us.
“And each email said, this is your campsite number, and this is the size of your campsite.
“So I’ve got everybody’s eviction order, and every one of those sites was over the 65 sq metres.”
Eighteen grandkids gather around their grand father, carrying on the tradition that keeps the family coming back to Brooms Head for generations.
Mr Shephard said safety concerns had been overblown and that in the 38 years he had been coming to Brooms Head, there had only been one incident where an ambulance had been called to attend an injured child.
He said campers took it upon themselves to police safety problems if drivers exceeded the 5kmh internal speed limit.
“If some driver comes through here too fast, one of us down here will race up the hill and grab that driver on the loop road and say that’s not to be done,” Mr Shephard said.
So, what is all the fuss about?
The Broom, as the area originally called Cakora Point became known after 1870, when a broom from the wreck of the schooner Eureka washed up on the beach, has a different vibe to most popular holiday destinations.
While most popular places – think Byron Bay or Yamba – started as townships whose attractions brought visitors in numbers that changed their characters, Brooms Head was the opposite.
Archeological evidence suggest for thousands of years the Yaegl people hunted and used the area between Brooms Head and Sandon as a meeting place.
From the 1880s onwards it was a favoured camping area for Maclean residents and Lower Clarence farmers.
The township that has grown since has largely been in response to the popularity of the area as a holiday destination.
And many of the people soon to be “evicted” by the council’s ruling are descendants of those early campers who came to the area and set up camp with their iron stoves, and house cows in tow.
The Northern Rivers Times spoke to three families who are lifetime park users and whose families have come here for generations.
It’s easy to see how these people have become attached to their Brooms Head camp sites.
Mr Shephard said he had been coming to the Broom for 38 years and his wife Lyn for 57 years.
“Her sister and brother in law and their family camp here,” he said.
“So, you know, with my family alone, it’s Lyns family. It’s four generations.
“You would remember that seven years ago we had a spate of suicides in Grafton. My daughter was one of them. Matty’s ashes are here on this site.”
Tweed Heads resident Trish Hoffman is another who has a strong attachment to her site.
She has five siblings and between them they have 18 children.
“We all come back there every Christmas all six of us,” she said. “We have our own sites. We’ve got our own kids. We’ve got 18 kids between us.
“And that’s the place where we reunite every year.”
There are many special memories for campers. Trish Hoffman treasures this last photo with her mum, Kaye Bolton, at Brooms Head. The funerals for both her parents were held at her families camp site.
It’s also at the place where the family held the funeral for their parents, Kaye and Garry Bolton, who both died young from cancer two years ago.
“Dad worked for the council for over 30 years, and he was so proud to work for the council, and he would just be appalled by this,” she said.
“And to be honest, I had so much respect for them as well because of his history with them.
“But now I just think they’re disgusting, the way they’ve treated us.”
Ms Hoffman said some of the council’s claims about the need to balance camping needs with community use of the park did not ring true.
“We were out there for six weeks this year, and we did a survey every single day while they were at their peak season,” she said.
“There was only one day where the car parking was full. Every other day we took pictures and it was not full.
“There was only one day where the access and that to the beach would have been challenging.”
Ms Hoffman said the town businesses also supported the campers.
“You’ve got the Snack Shack, you’ve got the general store, and you’ve got the bowling club there, and they came to our meeting out there, and they’re absolutely appalled,” she said.
“Not once were they approached by council about the decision.
“They weren’t involved in it, and they don’t support it, because they’re going to miss out massively. It’s going to impact them hugely.”
Neil Foster and his family have links to the region going back generations.
The Brooms Head campers affected by the council decision have said they will fight the decision. Here they gave in protest for a television news item on their situation.
But it his personal history that makes coming to Brooms Head every year so special.
“ I’m actually one of the white, Stolen Generation,” he said.
“ I’ve got a piece of paper that says, from the child from the Commission of Child Welfare that I was taken from my mother at birth in 1960.
“My mother was raped. Subsequently, she was under the age of consent at age16, and wasn’t capable, deemed by the department to be able to look after me.
“So I was one of the white ones taken from my family.”
Mr Foster said he never sought to make anything of this, but he experience coming to Brooms Head over 46 years had been special to him.
“I’ve never used that, but when I why I bring it up is Brooms Head to me, is my family,” he said.
“So I’ve created a whole new family since then, and we meet there every year in January for three weeks over the course of the three weeks that we’re there all different members of my-now family, including the campers, because I call them my family. I’ve known them now for 46 years.”
And more happily it is where he met his wife when they were both teens.
“It’s our point, it’s our place. It’s where we wanted our ashes to be when we die,” he said.
“Because it’s, you know, I courted my wife there. I was 18. She was 17.
“That’s the first time I was there. So it’s got very, very valuable memories for me.”
Mr Foster said he and other campers were prepared to take this matter further and he had already written to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, about it.
Brooms Head businesses will suffer if the campers are forced off their sites says Trish Hoffman. She said the Snack Shack was a big favourite for her kids and all their cousins.
“A lot of people can’t afford to go to the Maldives for holidays,” he said.
“I wrote a letter to Mr Albanese about it as well, because I was pretty upset saying that, you know, you you’re telling us to get out there and be with our kids and get them away from the TV, and get them away from electronic devices.
“That’s exactly what Brooms Head does. It teaches about the environment, the ecosystem.
“It teaches them how to be a little bit independent.
“We teach them how to swim. Teach them how to look after each other. We teach them how to be friendly with other people they’ve only just met, and all these cultural things that come into it.”
And he said this attitude extended across cultures.
“You know, the local indigenous people are fully in support of us as well,” he said.
“They don’t want it to change from the way it is.”
And all three families are still smarting from the decision in April last year to outlaw caravans from the campsite.
In a bid to work with the council, they have all mothballed their caravans and spent up to $24,000, in one case, buying camper vans so they can continue to holiday at their preferred sites.
Mr Foster summed up the decision.
“It’s halfway through the approval or not even halfway through the approval process yet,” he said.
“Because we wanted to camp through this year with our grandkids, and we bought the camper to do that.
“But technically, we could have turned up with the caravan and just set up our site as per normal, because nothing’s gone through to say that we have to do anything different.”
The Northern Rivers Times has asked the general manager to comment further, but has not received a reply. The paper will publish any further responses from the council on this matter.
For more local news, click here.
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