Call to close camping sites
Freedom camping spots in Tasman District will remain open despite a councillor calling for their closure due to fears that ‘‘high risk’’ travellers using them might help to spread coronavirus.
Golden Bay ward councillor Celia Butler has called for all designated freedom camping sites in the area to be closed. She said she was concerned that freedom camping sites were places where the virus could be easily transmitted.
Others in the community had similar fears, she said.
Butler was concerned about a ‘‘high risk group’’ of tourists who had arrived from overseas in the last week – before mandatory isolation requirements came into force – and could be carrying the virus.
She said there was nowhere at the camping sites for campers to wash their hands. They were communal and shared spaces with only one or two toilets and no sink.
‘‘There will be a window of people who will have arrived on planes, and they might want to carry on with their travel plans and not self-isolate,’’ Butler said.
‘‘I’m very concerned that people simply don’t understand. It’s a completely novel situation.’’
Golden Bay is a popular holiday destination for travellers and freedom campers. Many cars, vans and campervans were still parked up each night this week at sites at Waitapu Bridge and Taupata Point.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern closed all borders to foreign nationals in an unprecedented move to halt the spread of Covid-19.
Tasman District Council communications adviser Chris Choat said the council had no plans to close any sites in the district, as this would just disperse the freedom campers elsewhere.
‘‘Where would they go? At least at the freedom camping sites we’ve provided basic hygiene facilities, like toilets with hand sanitiser, and the showers in town [Takaka]. We should accommodate them and lessen the risk.’’
Cleaning staff were taking extra precautions when cleaning the facilities, Choat said.
Ministry of Health communications adviser Anna Kenna said self-isolation should not be undertaken in a setting where those self-isolating were using communal facilities, such as backpackers, campgrounds and freedom camping sites. The exception was if they were completely self-contained, such as a campervan.
If tourism operators or others were worried that someone was breaching self-isolation guidelines, they should contact the authorities, Kenna said.
German freedom campers Jill Stroedichke and Jonas Kneip, who are staying at Waitapu Bridge, said they were worried about tourists arriving and not self-isolating.
Stroedichke said they were thinking about how to best manage the situation, and questioning whether they would continue freedom camping.
‘‘We have been reading about tourists who say they don’t want to make this self-quarantine, and I think that’s not OK.’’
Couples Gerhard and Andrea Hoelscher, and Maria and Bernard
Rogge, arrived in the country two weeks ago from Germany and are travelling in Jucy campervans. They have had their flights home with Singapore Airlines cancelled.
Gerhard Hoelscher said they had heard of the new restrictions on selfisolation for travellers entering the country. ‘‘We are aware of this, but we have no fear.’’
Jadwiga Krzystanek and Eua Tatar Suchecka were scrambling to find out how to return to their home countries, the Netherlands and Poland. They had booked flights to Berlin in two weeks.
The middle-aged friends, staying at Taupata Point, said Poland’s borders had been closed and long traffic queues had built up at crossing points. Krzystanek said there were queues four kilometres long, and people waiting for a week to be let through.
‘‘We don’t know if we should stay or rebook our flights,’’ said Suchecka. ‘‘We tried to contact the embassy, but there’s no answer. We sent emails, and just received a standard answer they are too busy.’’
Krzystanek said they had only enough money to last two or three extra weeks in New Zealand.
‘‘Our children at home are saying, ‘Just enjoy your holiday and stay there where it’s safe’, because it’s not very safe in Europe any more. In Italy, it’s armageddon.’’