Newhaven Amazing

Today I received a call at work from the manager of Newhaven Station. She rang me about our blog post (7 July), following up on the comments I’d written about noisy campers. Turns out the person who read this post (wow!! thanks for reading!) was concerned about the very full campground and the noise I described, and thus decided to call up Newhaven and investigate.

The Newhaven manager (who’d been away the weekend we were there) said that it was the very first time ever there’d been a full campground of people and that she’d had another comment about the noisy people as well. Believe me, we were equally surprised to find so many people at the campground, as previously when I’d stayed there, I was the only one there. Living in the NT and working in Parks has spoilt us. We don’t like to go to places and find other people camped nearby. Most of the time when we go camping, we are the only ones and that’s the way we prefer it.

I felt partially guilty whilst talking to the Newhaven manager on the phone. I had written what must have sounded like an overly negative post about Newhaven, but in actual fact, my comments about the noisy old buggers make up about 10% of the total post. The rest of it promotes Newhaven. I assured her that we had a wonderful time otherwise and highly recommended it as a destination.

For me, what is remarkable about this story is that:

1. People are using our humble blog as a source of information about visiting Central Australia
2. There is a lot of positive information about Newhaven in the post, but it was the negative information that prompted the phone call (human nature, I know, linked to out survival instincts)

Personally, I’m with the Newhaven managers. The weekend we chose to go to Newhaven was very unusual in that it was busy. If you’re thinking about going to Newhaven, don’t let this put you off. GO!! It’s an amazing place and a visit is well worthwhile.

The other thing that the call did was to make me examine the reasons that strangers come to our blog. The number one search phrase that brings people to our blog is ‘Mt Zeil’. That’s right. People come here and use the blog as a source of info for climbing Mt Zeil. We already knew this, and earlier this year I created a page devoted to climbing Mt Zeil. However, when I looked at the blog stats, I discovered that people are also starting to search for ‘Newhaven’ and there was even one on ‘camping at Mt Liebig’. Many of our other blog hits come from people searching for ‘mandala’, ‘Body Attack’, and even ‘fitness’.

At any rate, I’m not going to change the blog post. I have had too many noisy/drunk camper experiences to suffer these fools lightly. The last thing Central Australia needs is another noisy, drunk camper.