Why big busy caravan parks charge so much

We often take the caravan parks we stay in for granted, don't we?

We roll through the boom gates, reverse onto a powered site, plug in the electricity and perhaps wander off to explore.

If the amenities block is spotless, the rubbish bins are empty and the hot showers never run cold, we barely notice.

If something isn't quite right, however, we're quick enough to point it out...

The RAC Monkey Mia Resort in Western Australia's Shark Bay is perhaps one of the most complex facilities of its type.

Once upon a time this was just a basic caravan park adjacent to a beach where a bunch of dolphins hung out.

But a massive $30 million investment that kicked off in 2018 has grown it into a multi-faceted resort that just happens to be sitting on the remote Peron Peninsula around 850km from Perth.

There’s a lot going on here.

The bloke at the top of the pyramid in charge of making all this run smoothly is Resort Manager Martin Greenside. He’s worked on-site for 31 years and it’s fair to say he loves the joint.

“I came to see a friend get married here and they offered me a job and that was it. I was sort of hook, line and sinker."

He’d have to love it because his job sounds hectic!

So what don't you oversee? "The dolphins."

Everything else, it seems, falls under Martin's watch.

While the world-famous wild dolphin experience is managed by Western Australia's Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), Martin and his team are responsible for virtually everything else visitors see – and plenty they never do.

The size and remoteness of the resort means it has to be as self-sufficient as possible.

So how do Greenside and his crew go about maintaining the facility the way it should be? Let’s work through the numbers...

Related: What makes the perfect Aussie caravan park?

Related: Has caravan park security gone too far?

Related: The rising cost of holiday camping

Before the RAC WA bought it in 2015 and began a massive upgrade,  it was a normal camping site on a smaller footprint.

It now sits on five hectares, includes 165 powered caravan sites, around 60 unpowered camping sites, beachfront villas, hotel-style rooms, family accommodation, backpacker dormitories, two restaurants and bars, a retail store, commercial laundry, two swimming pools and extensive guest facilities.

Complicating the situation, the resort sits within Shark Bay World Heritage Area adjacent to the world famous dolphin experience.

The resort works closely with DBCA, supporting researchers and volunteers and helping protect one of Australia's best-known wildlife attractions, adding another layer to the operation.

“There's quite a few environmental conditions we do have to uphold, especially since the development back in 2018,” explains Martin. “They sometimes can be quite challenging, but we stay on top of them and do what we need to do to tick all the boxes.”

All up 110,000 people visit the site every year. About 40,000 stay at least one night. At peak times during school holidays there are 1200 guests on-site each night.

Around 85 people work there, all of them living on-site. Around 90 per cent of the workforce are backpackers completing regional work requirements for their visas.

In the course of a year the site uses 1.74 tonnes of beans to brew around 70,000 coffees, cooks up 95,000 rashers of bacon (that’s 2380kg!), serves up 10.6 tonnes of hot chips, 11,705 pizzas using 1560kg of mozzarella, 22,848 waffles and 10,260 Magnum ice creams.

Ah yes, amenities. How much do we caravanners hate a dirty, manky shower stall or toilet. At a place like Monkey Mia, which charges top dollar for a site, the pressure is on to deliver an acceptable standard.

"We have a dedicated public amenities crew," Martin explains.

"They start at six o'clock in the morning and finish at eight at night. It's like painting the Harbour Bridge. Once they get to one end, they start again."

Martin isn’t a remote manager pulling the strings either. As he ruefully recounts he’s had his inevitable experiences getting his hands – and the rest of him – dirty.

And if a dirty toilet is a downer, so are overflowing bins.

To avoid that, the resort owns its own seven-tonne compactor truck, servicing around 300 bins across the property before hauling the waste every couple of days back to Denham, 26km away across the Peron Peninsula.

Fish frames and offal from Shark Bay's popular fishing scene are frozen before disposal to keep smells and pests under control, while the Containers for Change recycling program has grown so much it now diverts dozens of bulk containers of bottles and cans every month.

Because it’s so remote, the resort has to generate its own power and fresh water.

Hidden away on the hill above the resort is what amounts to a small utility company.

Monkey Mia generates its own electricity using six large diesel generators. It pumps groundwater from its own bore before filtering it through reverse osmosis, ultraviolet treatment and chlorination to produce safe drinking water.

Beneath the surface sits a sophisticated membrane bioreactor wastewater treatment plant that has quietly processed every drop of sewage generated by the resort since 2013.

Without regular diesel deliveries the generators stop, the power goes out and, as he puts it, "everything shuts down".

A major solar and battery installation is now planned to dramatically reduce the resort's reliance on diesel and slash its carbon footprint, although the complexity of building such infrastructure in a remote location has delayed the project.

Martin says managing the infrastructure is only half the job. The other half is people, both guests and staff.

Remarkably, Martin says serious incidents between guests are rare.

“It's just got some magic vibes going to it, and I think that just extends to all the guests and all the staff alike,” he muses.

Maybe it’s the dolphins, the scenery, the remoteness, or a combination of all three that contribute to the lack of angst.

Undoubtedly, clean toilets and empty bins help too.