Over Summer, small Aussie coastal towns find themselves overwhelmed with travellers, leading one NSW mid north coast town to advise tourists to stay away.
Seal Rocks was hit with a wave of holiday-makers over the past few weeks, prompting the council to send a message to travellers.
“Please consider exploring other parts of our region over the coming days, as the amount of people in Seal Rocks is causing traffic and emergency access hazards,” MidCoast Council said in a social media post.
“Council staff are currently out and about in the area moving people on.”
MidCoast Council director of liveable communities, Paul De Szell, said traffic congestion from the influx of tourists had caused issues for the town.
“We had issues particularly last year where we were so congested we had a gridlock situation,” De Szell told the ABC.
“We couldn‘t get emergency vehicles in there, we couldn’t get waste trucks in there, and we don’t want it to escalate to that point again.”
De Szell said that council rangers had to move people along and issue fines for illegal parking and unlawful camping.
However, Seal Rocks is just one of the many towns pushing back against the season influx of tourists.
Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay featured in the Guinness Book of Records for having the whitest sand in the world a few years ago and became overwhelmed with tourists. Travellers were turned away over the Christmas and New Year’s period and Destination NSW warned people to expect delays.
DNSW encouraged tourists to check out “one of the 15 other equally beautiful and less busy White Sand Beaches and explore the many options of Shoalhaven beaches” to ease pressure on the area.
