Roughing it, revisited ... a tent at Paperbark Camp, Jervis Bay.
Fresh from a night in the bush, Louise Southerden reports on the popularity of 'glamping' and the rise of ecotourism.
The slowdown from city living begins even before we arrive at Paperbark Camp. It's a Friday night and we'd taken the afternoon off to go surfing on the way south from Sydney to Jervis Bay. Cold, salty and in need of a hot shower, we pull off the main road and follow a meandering, potholed track deeper into the dark bush.
It's too long to be a driveway. We're falling down a rabbit hole that leads through a gravel car park (which keeps guests' vehicles away from the camp) to our first impressions: a corrugated-iron building on stilts with a small, high window and a cut-out doorway.
It's underwhelming, particularly at night, and you have to walk beneath it to access the stairs. (The back of the building is considerably more appealing, we discover later, with a cantilevered roof, glass panels and timber verandahs facing the surrounding bush.)
We're here in mid-June, just before Paperbark closes for the winter (it reopened yesterday), which, in hindsight, is probably not the best time for a first visit. Our tent is comfortable enough - it's on a raised timber deck under a large canvas canopy and inside there's a queen-sized bed, solar-powered lights, tea-making facilities (a billy and portable gas stove) and an en suite with shower, free-standing bath and flushing toilet - but it's too cold to linger.
So, after hot showers, we join a couple of guests by the campfire outside the stilt-house, called the Gunyah (an Aboriginal word meaning "place of shelter").
In warmer months, we could dine on the verandah, eye-to-eye with possums and eucalypts. This time of year, the open fire is crackling, though it has a hard time warming the high-ceilinged Gunyah with its bare floors, wooden tables and glass doors. Fortunately the food at this Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide-recommended restaurant more than makes up for the chill. It is deliciously fresh, local and, where possible, organic - fish caught in the bay, mushrooms from Mittagong, even wines predominantly from NSW vineyards. We warm up with hot chocolates before turning in for the night; on our way out, the staff kindly hand us hot-water bottles.
On Saturday morning, I remember why we came all this way to sleep in a tent: waking up in a bed in the bush is magical. Close your eyes and the tent disappears, the bird calls sound so clear and close: shrieking black cockatoos, a cacophony of kookaburras. "You don't listen to them," says my Kiwi partner, used to more softly spoken birds. "They assault your ears."
One of us gets up to open the window flaps and the sun pours in like butterscotch, like Joni Mitchell's Chelsea Morning.
The joys of tented camps are no longer a secret: you enjoy the pleasures of camping (being in nature, living simply) without the problems (crowded campsites, pitching your own tent, shared amenities) plus a few comforts (a good bed, your own bathroom, fine food).
But it wasn't always so. When Paperbark opened in 1998, it unwittingly pioneered "glamping" in Australia.
The spark of inspiration came to Sydney couple Irena and Jeremy Hutchings in 1990 while holidaying at one of Africa's original safari camps, Lloyd's, in Botswana.
"I just loved the simplicity of it, loved being in the bush, in comfort, and we thought, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful to do this in Australia?' " Irena says. "We thought about it all the way home from Africa, thinking that when Jeremy retired we would build our little bush camp."
Searching for a suitable site, they happened upon Jervis Bay. "Ten of us came down and stayed in this funny little place," Irena says. "There was not much accommodation here back then and one day we went to Murrays Beach [in Booderee National Park] - there wasn't a soul around. We thought there must be stingers in the water; we couldn't understand why there were no other people in such a beautiful place."
In 1993, they bought 34 hectares of bushland five minutes from Huskisson and right on Currambene Creek, which flows into Jervis Bay. Then came 4½ years of "heartache and struggle" to obtain council approval; nothing like this had been attempted before.
In the meantime, architect Trevor Hamilton, of Sydney firm Nettleton Tribe, designed a house that they opened as a bed and breakfast in 1995 to help them learn about hospitality (Irena had worked in publishing, Jeremy was an engineer). They also tested their prototype safari tent, used by the South African army, which guests and friends gave the "thumbs up".
When approval finally came, tent platforms were built and 10 tents put up one winter, with a few modifications such as canopies to protect them from falling branches. The Gunyah, designed by Hamilton, was built the following winter and the Hutchings' "small private bush camp" opened in October 1998, just in time to be reviewed in Good Weekend's 52 Weekends Away that month. "The phone didn't stop ringing, it was two days of absolute chaos," Irena says. Thirteen years later, Paperbark Camp is booked out every weekend two months in advance.
The inspiration might have come from Africa but Paperbark's success "lies in the fact that it didn't try to mimic African safari tents but created an Australian version", the chief executive of Ecotourism Australia, Kym Cheatham, says. "The sense of place is really strong. There's no doubt, when you're at Paperbark Camp, that you're in the middle of a paperbark forest; you can hear possums running around outside at night and birds in the morning but you're in this amazingly comfortable tent."
There's also its location - close to beautiful Jervis Bay's white-sand beaches, resident dolphins, national park and Aboriginal heritage, yet secluded and away from the main settlements of Huskisson and Vincentia - and its eco-ethics. Paperbark has Advanced Eco-accreditation since 1999. The camp takes up only about three hectares of the property, no large trees were removed for its construction and various sustainability measures are in place to ensure it treads lightly on its surroundings, which is one of the core values of glamping. "Glamping fits Australia well," Cheatham says.
"Because of our climate, because it's light on the land, as long as it's run according to best-practice environmental standards, and because it can even be removed without leaving a trace, glamping is opening up protected natural areas to tourism that might not sustain other kinds of infrastructure - such as national parks and World Heritage areas."
There are now more than 20 glamping properties throughout Australia. Most are in Queensland, the Northern Territory and north-west Western Australia.
"Glamps" range from simple to chic, costly to cheap(er). Parks Victoria has tented camps at Cape Conran and Buchan Caves from $150 a night; Longitude 131°, which set new standards for ecotourism when it opened on the edge of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in 2002, has 15 tents that are more like hotel rooms with Lawrence of Arabia-style draped ceilings, from $2070 a night. The biggest glamping resort is Eco Beach, near Broome, with 25 eco-tents (in addition to 30 solar-powered eco-villas). The smallest are the two newest: Tandara Luxury, a single tent in Lane Cove River Tourist Park, Sydney, which opened in November last year; and Ketchup's Bank Glamping, in south-east Queensland, which opened two tents in May and July this year.
A common element is their pristine natural locations. Sal Salis has nine tents in the dunes of Australia's most recently listed World Heritage area, the 600,000-hectare Ningaloo Coast. On Wilson Island, at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, guests come for a romantic castaway stay and fall in love with the wildlife: nesting turtles, sharks, tropical fish, rays and thousands of noddy terns and muttonbirds (the island closes during nesting season, January 26 to March 2 next year).
Glamping is evolving, too. There's a "walk, camp, dine" experience offered by tour operator The CoastTrack in Royal National Park, south of Sydney; the tents are smaller than safari tents and have two single beds but they do have down doonas and the $850-a-person rate includes a post-walk massage and four-course dinner.
Zoos in NSW and Victoria are using safari tents for their Roar & Snore and Slumber Safari experiences. Blue Mountains Private Safaris accommodates guests in luxury swags at a remote bush location. Some properties, such as Paperbark Camp, are Green Travel Leaders (operators that have been Advanced Eco-accredited for 10 years or more) and are members of Eco Lodges of Australia, two recent initiatives of Ecotourism Australia, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
Glamping might be walking hand-in-hand with ecotourism but it's also riding on its coat-tails. Ecotourism is generally thought to have started in Costa Rica in the mid-1980s; Ecotourism Australia was one of the first such organisations in the world when it was formed in 1991 and its eco-accreditation scheme was a world-first in 1995. There are now about 130 eco-certification programs worldwide and more than 1000 eco-certified tourism businesses in Australia. Twice as many tourism experiences have been certified here in the past five years as in the previous decade.
Worldwide, ecotourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry. Until the GFC, it was growing at a rate of 10 per cent a year, compared with 4 per cent for the rest of tourism, according to Ecotourism Australia. The World Tourism Organisation's first International Congress on Ethics and Tourism will be held this month "in light of the acknowledged importance of developing more responsible and ethical tourism worldwide".
There are offshoots such as voluntourism, wildlife tourism and geotourism (tourism to areas of geological interest, such as those registered on the UNESCO's Global Geoparks Network since 2004). And "sustainable tourism" is on the rise, whereby tourism businesses that aren't essentially nature-based and businesses traditionally regarded as high-impact are embracing ways to operate more sustainably.
"We see it as [Ecotourism Australia's] role to help everyone in the tourism industry," Cheatham says. "It's all about finding a way to help people keep travelling, even in the face of climate change - for the sake of jobs, regional economies, indigenous communities - but in an environmentally sustainable way."
On Sunday morning, we're up with the birds again, to paddle one of Paperbark's bright orange Canadian canoes on the creek. The sun's first beams shine through tall trees on to the still, black water. A blue kingfisher warms itself on a branch. Ducks take off with a drumbeat of wings. A tiny rainbow sparkles in the dew on the grassy bank. We stay silent, taking it all in, not daring to speak lest we break the spell.
It's the essence of ecotourism and, the way things are going, we can look forward to more experiences like this.
Louise Southerden stayed courtesy of Paperbark Camp.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Paperbark Camp is three hours' drive south of Sydney and five minutes from Huskisson, near Jervis Bay, on the south coast. There are eight "original" and four "deluxe" safari tents, each with a king- or queen-size bed, hardwood floor and verandah, solar lighting and private en suite, open to the bush — and deluxe tents have claw-footed baths. It reopened yesterday and there are a new fleet of mountain bikes for guests to use, a new menu at the Gunyah, newly designed bird-watching guides in the tents and weekly Aboriginal storytelling nights around the campfire, run by a local Koori elder. There are also plans for a paddle race down Currambene Creek to Jervis Bay early next year.
Cost
Rates are $370 a night for an original tent, $520 for a deluxe tent, including breakfast; $510 and $660 with breakfast and dinner. The Jervis Bay Sailing Discovery package costs from $1220 for two nights, dinners, breakfasts and a four-hour swimming and sailing trip with gourmet lunch. See paperbarkcamp.com.au.
Ecotourism Australia, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, will hold its annual Global Eco conference in Sydney on November 7-10.
More information
See ecotourism.org.au, ecolodgesaustralia.com.au, sustainabletourismaustralia.com, greentravelleaders.com.au.
TEN TOP GLAMCAMPS
Parks Victoria has tented camps at Cape Conran and Buchan Caves in eastern Victoria for $154.50 a night and at Wilsons Promontory National Park, for $250 a night. See parkweb.vic.gov.au.
Longitude 131°, near Uluru, has 15 tented rooms from $2070 a night including all meals, tours, airport transfers and national park entry. See longitude131.com.au.
Eco Beach, 130 kilometres south of Broome, has 25 eco-tents from $165 a night including daily yoga. Turtle-monitoring trips are run in November- January. See ecobeach.com.au.
Tandara Luxury, in Lane Cove River Tourist Park in northern Sydney, has one tent for $350 a night Sunday-Thursday, $450 a night on weekends, including breakfast, bikes and entry to Lane Cove National Park. See tandarasydney.com.au.
Ketchup's Bank Glamping, 90 minutes from Brisbane, has two tents; rates are $249 a night. See ketchupsbankglamping.com.au.
Sal Salis has nine tents in Cape Range National Park near Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia; rates are $730 a person a night including transfers, meals, national park entry and guided sea kayaking, snorkelling and walks. See salsalis.com.au.
Wilson Island, on the Great Barrier Reef, has six tents, rates are $1080 a night (two-night minimum) including transfers from Heron Island, all meals and drinks. See wilsonisland.com.
The Coast Track sets up a tent for guests walking the Royal National Park coast track, just south of Sydney, for $850 a person including a massage and four-course dinner prepared on site. See thecoasttrack.com.
Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo, Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo in Victoria have Roar & Snore (also called Slumber Safari) experiences from $175 ($110 a child) including dinner, breakfast and guided night and morning walks. See taronga.org.au and zoo.org.au.
Blue Mountains Private Safaris runs two-day safaris with accommodation in six luxury swags for $850 a person including meals and hot bucket shower. See bluemountainsprivatesafaris.com.
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