Stealth camping.
Today I'm going to show you how I find myself camping parks when I come into a
new town. And maybe it's not just a new town, but it's somewhere where you,
what you've been before,
but you've not actually been there in a van and it's not until you actually
start looking for places to park that you actually start to find them when you
need them. So I'm going to jump on my phone.
Basically the first thing I do is jump onto my phone and just go over Google
maps.
So jump on there and I'll record exactly what I'm doing on Google maps right
now. Okay.
So here I am on the gold coast and as you can see I've got a tonne of different
places that are marked on my maps and these are places that I've looked at and I
wanted to check out. Some of them are actually places that were good and then,
and then there were other places that were not so good,
but basically I've just want to find different places that I could go and check
out.
So one that's pretty close to the beach is two is this one right here and I just
kept making myself a little note that says fairly flat car park near the main
road. So it sorta just refreshes my memory about what's actually there.
But the way I found that was going right in really close and you can't really
see much from this view. You've got to change it to the satellite view.
And then you'll see from here there are car parks out the front of apartment
buildings.
So this is actually a really good bond where instead of just instead of parking
on the road as like a parallel park,
then there's actually little car parks where you can reverse in.
The reason why I like parks like this is because when I reverse it and it gets
my head and my body away from where things could potentially go wrong,
there's always that very small,
minimal chance that a car might sideswipe you while you're parked on the side of
the road. So that's why I always do my best to get out of there,
get out of the way essentially.
So this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Oh look,
there's actually quite a lot for these types of things when you're looking
around. So rather than me parking in the gutter like this, for example,
I can reverse into these car parks right here and that way it gets my,
the back of my van off the street, it gets my head away from, you know,
where something could potentially go wrong. Um,
so I just feel safer there at night and I feel like I haven't met a slate.
The, the other places that I'm looking for, uh,
lacks sports areas and places like that. So, um,
tennis courts are usually pretty good. And also, um,
football fields tend to be pretty good as well. And there's,
there's some places up this way that I actually, um,
mocked out as well and not occasionally stay at.
So sort of giving you all my secrets spots here on the gold coast,
but I'm not actually here much longer so you can, can actually use them.
But yeah, here's another one. Flat car park, but open,
this is basically next to a football field or a cricket field, a cricket pitch.
Um, and I've slept there a number number of times.
Now the other places I've been looking for lately, um,
places like this where it's like a bit of a storm water drain or,
or just like a small Creek and they've got these bits of space between the road
and the actual drain or the Creek where you can park.
Now sometimes it works like this one, this one is fine.
I've actually parked here before and other times it doesn't because this,
the Hill is too steep and you either can't pocket or at all or it's just too
steep and it wouldn't be comfortable.
But some of these can work as well and they're easy to find on Google maps.
So today's Friday and it's the first one that I'm stealth camping all week.
In this video I'm pointed out the top three reasons why I'm paying for more
parking this year.
You can check that out afterwards as well to give you a bit of a different
perspective around what I have to say about stealth camping.
But for the most part I am actually staying out there on the road.
So the other place that I'd sometimes go,
it really depends on where I am and how far away they are,
but it's more industrial or commercial areas.
So these are ones where I'd get there fairly late, like probably after 9:00 PM.
And I guess the benefit or maybe the challenge with these types of places is
you're forced to wake up at 5:00 AM when all of the workers are getting to that
area.
So I sort of made sure that I'm awake super early if I knew parking them and
get, get out of that pretty early in the morning. Um, but the uh, low, uh,
benefit, we have a lot of these particular places.
Let me just spin the camera around and show you.
See the gutter on these particular, a lot of industrials estates is that,
um,
it's a gutter where you can pop up your oils and that will also level out the
side. So I'll sometimes do that as well to help level up the van.
And I'm looking for places that obviously are not having,
we don't have any workers at nighttime but also places that,
uh,
one way streets or colder sacks or somewhere where there's not a lot of traffic
running through.
Okay. So on back, these are the things that I'm looking for because, um,
first of all it makes completely no sense to be parking at the beach when there
are a lot of signs around that. Say if you park here,
you will be fine and no camping and all of those types of things. So why do it,
you know, the people who are doing it,
I just have essentially ruined it for everybody else because they do the wrong
things. Secondly,
if you are staying in the same spot and you do it and the ranger figures out who
you are and your number plate and all of that type of stuff,
no matter what you do, you're always going to be chased out.
So if you just stay out of trouble from the first time,
you'll never have a problem. I've been in this van 12 months now.
I've never had a problem. I've been parking 99% of the time, stealth,
camping out on the street. I'm finding places like these,
I've parked three kilometres from Sydney CBD doing using the same sort of
strategy.
I'm looking for places that are basically out of the way from people's houses
and things like that and fairly quiet and somewhere where people just wouldn't
think to look and mainly away from water, you know, white from the beaches,
away from the rivers,
away from places where there's public toilets where people know that vans are
going to frequent and then you'll never have any issue.
Let me actually just go into a another bit on here in Sydney where I'll show you
a nut. One time that I actually did park on the side of the road,
but I'll show you the reason why. Okay, so you can see here we've got a uh,
overarching shot of Moore park in Sydney. I no longer live in Sydney,
but I can tell you right now, if you do want to leave the van life in Sydney,
this is the perfect spot reason why you can see a tab there that says free
parking right around the outskirts of Centennial park.
There is free parking all along that road, all along Lang road.
And then just jump on the bus 10 minutes into the middle of the city and you're
there. But if we come down to this bottom part down here,
there's a little neighbourhood,
I guess you could say right next to Moore park where it's just one way in and
one of my app.
So that means there's very little traffic that flows through there at night and
across and over here on to near the Nina field at Moore park. Um,
there was actually quite a lot of bumps and stuff like that, um,
to help level up the van at night because what you might have realised by now
when you're parking in the gutter then a lot of the roads tend to slope towards
the gutter, which means your van isn't level overnight,
which can sometimes mean a bit of an uncomfortable sleep.
What I thought about here was there's actually these really big trees next to
the road that the roots are actually pushing up the side of the gutter a little
bit, which means you, if you can park on top of her root, it levels up the van,
which works so well for me.
And I'm sure there's not many people that think of that type of thing. Oh,
I used to park along that road.
It's really the only time that I've not parked somewhere off the road. Um,
but for the fact that it was a quite a,
quite a wide road and because I could level up the van when I was parked in the,
in the actual, um, gutter itself.
And I'd always try and park in front of another car so that there would be at
least one car behind me is like a bit of a barrier if something was to go wrong.
That works pretty well. There's very few, um, very few cars I buy. Uh,
at night, you know, there was, there was no issues whatsoever.
I guess some people sometimes get a little bit cautious about parking around
parks, but that neighbourhood is actually I guess quite wealthy. Um,
so it tends to not attract, you know, any refractory or anything like that.
So that was another thing that I did.
And then the other things that I'm doing as I'm going into a stealth camping
park and not is just making sure that firstly as I'm, before I roll in,
I've got all the doors locked so that when I hit the button to lock the,
the event, not, um, I've done wake up anyone up by, you know,
the blink blinkers flashing on and off as it is,
which is the signal to say that it's locked.
I'm also making sure that I've gone to the toilet or like if I do need to go to
the toilet,
I'm fortunate enough to have one in the van and I use that and you know,
just making sure I brush my teeth and things like that when I get in the vent.
And then as soon as I have found somebody to park,
I jumped straight over the back through the middle and you know,
keep fairly quiet. Sometimes I'll watch it, some Netflix,
sometimes I'll get a little bit of work done on my laptop.
If I want to listen to music, I'll put headphones in and those types of things.
You don't want to be going into a park where you're going to sleep the night and
then start cooking and start banging pots and pans around and just making a
tonne of noise or like flaring your music up.
It's just a silly way to go about it. And you know,
the cuss nothing to be kind to others. Right.
And these people are paying to live there and these places.
And if you fly under the radar,
it doesn't matter if you can continue to park there because they know after,
you know, the first couple of nights are, you know, if they have figured it out,
most people won't figure it out.
But if they have figured out that there's someone sleeping in that then,
and you're quiet, then they're not going to care at all.
So these are my tips to finding a really great stealth camping park in your
band, whether you're in the city or anywhere as you go into a brand new city.
It's just really,
it's just about thinking about it a little bit and planning first and um,
and not being, and not doing the wrong thing. So I hope you enjoy these tips.
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So do you have any questions on that? Let me know.
If you want me to expand on this a little bit more,
let me know and I'll speak to you in the next video. Bye. Bye.