By Romy Stephens
Owners of a new tourist development at Lilydale Pine Hill Caravan Park believe they can now meet a high demand to accommodate tourists in the Yarra Ranges.
The development officially opened on 14 February with special guests Evelyn MP Bridget Vallence and Yarra Ranges Tourism CEO Simon O’Callaghan.
It features over 100 cabin and caravan sites for tourists with the construction of amenities still underway.
But it wasn’t an easy process to get the new sites up and running.
Caravan park owners Robert and Janette took over the park in 2000 and at the time, it only catered for residential purposes.
Janette said that before they arrived, numerous attempts to expand the park for tourists had been unsuccessful.
“The previous owner was here for 20 years and he’d tried two or three times to get the shire to agree to extend the park so they could cater for tourism. Each of them failed,” she said.
She said during the early days of opening, tourists would often come with nowhere else to stay.
“When we started 20 years ago people would turn up at the entrance and they’d walk in and say ‘please don’t turn us away, we would never have come if we realised there was no accommodation, nowhere for us to go with our caravan’,” Janette explained.
“In 2007 we made the decision to tackle the shire again and we put an application in for development.”
That application was finally approved in two stages.
Stage 1 opened two years ago and the recent completion of Stage 2 has seen the entire project now finished.
Janette said benefits from the expansion are already starting to show.
“It’s been just so well supported and our percentages have been well above what we had hoped,” she said.
“And the feedback that we’re getting in relation to the way the sites are set up the facilities that they have and the location is really great.”
Janette said the new development was not only important for tourists, but also people visiting for family, friends, events and work.
She added that despite the potential concern of tourism increasing too much across the Yarra Ranges, it’s important to sustain the inevitably growing trend and support local businesses.
“It is really important that our infrastructure keeps up with bringing more people into the area and you don’t want to change the area drastically.”
“We promote and partner with local business, that’s become a big focus for us.
“We’ve set up information brochures voucher books in partnership with a wide range of local businesses.”
The new development at Lilydale Pine Hill Caravan Park is now available for tourists.
To find out more, visit www.lilydalepinehill.com.au.
