Opinion: Should Van Life Be More Accepted Throughout Australia?

Could designated overnight areas offer a practical middle ground for responsible travellers, rock climbers or otherwise? Vertical Life’s Editor Claire Williams reckons yes.

The full version of this piece first appeared in Vertical Life, Australia’s rock climbing magazine. 

It’s no secret that van life has become part of climbing culture over the past decade. For many climbers, having a vehicle they can sleep in means freedom to chase good weather, explore remote crags, and spend more time outside without constantly paying for accommodation or packing up a wet tent. 

But across Australia, that lifestyle’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Local councils are introducing more no-camping and no-overnight-stay signs in popular destinations, often in response to the behaviour of a minority of travellers. We’ve all seen it: public spaces littered with rubbish, toilet paper, and human waste. It’s a terrible look and can have a significant impact on the people who live in and visit these areas.

Much of the time, this behaviour comes down to inconsiderate or disrespectful travellers who simply don’t care about the impact they leave behind. But from the perspective of a council or land manager, distinguishing between someone behaving irresponsibly and someone practising responsible van life can be difficult.

A self-contained van parked overnight can look exactly the same as someone setting up an unofficial campsite. And when the behaviour of a minority creates enough problems, it’s understandable that councils may choose the simplest solution: ban overnight stays altogether.

But what about the people doing the right thing?

What about the travellers leaving no trace and simply wanting somewhere safe to pull over for one night before continuing their journey?

Should they really be treated the same?

Camping or simply stopping?

Perhaps part of the problem is that we lump everything under the term ‘camping’.

There’s a difference between setting up camp and parking a vehicle overnight.

Camping might involve setting up a tent, lighting a fire, and staying for several days. An overnight vehicle stay could simply mean pulling into a designated area in the evening, sleeping and driving away in the morning.

The two activities have very different impacts.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether Australia should allow camping everywhere. It’s whether councils could create a more sensible framework for short-term overnight vehicle stays.

What could that look like?

Imagine designated public spaces where vehicles could stay for one night, subject to a clear set of rules. 

Stay one night only. Arrive in the evening and leave in the morning. No awnings or campsites. No fires, generators, or dumping of wastewater. No excessive noise or rubbish. The expectation would be simple: use the space to rest, then move on.

There are already examples of this approach working. In Boonah, Queensland, near Frog Buttress, an overnight stay car park at the local information centre has become a useful part of the community. Frog Buttress attracts climbers from across the country and can be booked out during peak periods, creating significant demand for nearby accommodation and overnight stays. Providing a designated place for travellers to stay overnight helps accommodate that influx without encouraging people to set up unofficial campsites throughout the surrounding area.

In this space, travellers have access to bins, water taps, and toilets. During my month-long stay in the area, I found the information centre was consistently quiet and clean, and it appeared that travellers generally respected the one-night stay rules.

Mt York in the Blue Mountains is another well-known free camping hotspot. On weekends and during school holidays, however, the area can become heavily congested. With other camping areas periodically closed due to landslides and other access issues, finding a legal alternative can be difficult. Yet the Blue Mountains has numerous lookouts and public spaces with existing toilet facilities, away from residential areas, that could potentially be considered for controlled overnight stays.

The idea isn’t to turn every lookout, car park, or public park into a campground. Councils could identify locations where overnight vehicle stays are appropriate, taking into account proximity to residents, environmental sensitivity, existing facilities and demand. Parks with toilet facilities could accommodate a wider range of travellers, while locations without facilities could potentially be limited to genuinely self-contained vehicles with their own certified toilet and wastewater systems.

It wouldn’t need to be everywhere. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be.

A network of carefully selected overnight areas across regional Australia could provide a practical alternative to blanket bans, while still giving councils control over where people stay and how those spaces are managed.

Read more: The Hidden Cost Of Free Camping

What about a national permit system?

Perhaps Australia could take this a step further with a national overnight vehicle permit.

Rather than navigating different rules in every council area, travellers could apply for one annual permit allowing them to use participating designated overnight areas across the country. The permit could be linked to the vehicle, with a small fee helping councils manage the system.

Individual councils and land managers would still decide which locations are suitable, but travellers would have one consistent set of expectations and a digital map showing where permitted overnight stays were available.

Importantly, the system could also improve safety and accountability. A simple permit system would give councils greater visibility over who’s staying in these areas, while clear rules and designated spaces could reduce unsafe or inappropriate overnight parking. Persistent offenders could lose their permit, while councils would gain useful data about where people are travelling, where demand is highest and where additional facilities may be needed.

But what about caravan parks?

The obvious argument is that travellers can simply stay at a caravan park. And for many people, that’s a perfectly good option. 

But caravan parks aren’t necessarily suitable for everyone. They’re often more expensive, require advance planning, and can be difficult to access at short notice during busy periods.

For someone travelling full-time, those costs add up quickly. There’s also a fundamental difference between what many van travellers are looking for and what a caravan park provides.

Personally, I don’t particularly want to spend every night packed between rows of caravans. One of the reasons I live on the road is because I enjoy the freedom and openness that comes with it. If I could wake up surrounded by a forest each day, I would.

That doesn’t mean I want to occupy someone’s backyard or take over a public park. I simply want somewhere safe and unobtrusive to sleep before continuing to my next destination.

Van Travellers Still Contribute to Local Communities

There can sometimes be a perception that climbers travelling in vans are simply passing through without contributing much to the local economy. But the reality can be a little more nuanced.

Van travellers still buy fuel, groceries, coffee, meals, climbing equipment, camping gear, and vehicle repairs. They visit local businesses, national parks, climbing areas, and other attractions.

A  traveller might spend nothing on accommodation but still spend hundreds of dollars in a regional town. For smaller communities, encouraging responsible travellers to stop for a night could be an economic opportunity rather than simply another problem to manage.

But what about the locals?

This is where the argument needs some balance.

Residents have legitimate concerns about poorly managed van life. For people who live in these communities, public spaces aren’t just somewhere travellers pass through. They are parks, beaches, picnic areas, and recreation spaces that locals use every day. Nobody wants to find rubbish left behind, overflowing toilets, generators running late into the night, or travellers settling in for weeks at a time.

There’s also a genuine concern about the cumulative impact. One van staying overnight might have very little effect, but dozens of vehicles arriving in the same place, night after night, can put pressure on facilities and change the character of a local area. For residents, that can understandably become frustrating, particularly when they feel they have little say in how public spaces are being used.

Those concerns shouldn’t be dismissed as being anti-van life or anti-tourism. Most locals want their towns and natural areas to be enjoyed by visitors, but they also have a reasonable expectation that visitors will respect the place they call home.

Having practical ways to accommodate responsible travellers while protecting the amenity of local communities could actually help address the problem. Providing designated places to stay gives travellers an appropriate alternative to pulling up wherever they can find a spot, including outside someone’s home or in areas where overnight camping isn’t permitted. It shifts the focus from simply moving travellers on to managing where they stay in a way that works better for both visitors and residents.

And Climbers Have a Role To Play

For the climbing community, this conversation is particularly relevant. Many of Australia’s best climbing areas are remote, requiring long drives and sometimes multiple days of travel. Vans make it possible for climbers to spend weekends, weeks, or even months exploring these places, but that freedom comes with responsibility.

If we want van life to remain viable, we need to leave places better than we found them: take our rubbish, manage waste properly, respect locals, keep noise down, not overstay, and remember that public land is shared by everyone.

Van life isn’t going away, nor should every public space become a campground. The challenge is finding a workable system that makes responsible van life possible without making everyone else pay the price for the irresponsible few.

So what do you think? Should Australia come up with a better system for responsible van life, or is the current approach the best way to protect our public spaces and local communities?