CAMPERS come and campers go. But one Ocean Grove holidaymaker can truly be called the number one ticket holder.
Glenda Werrett has been holidaying on the spit campsite for 60 years this year.
“There have been five generations of us that have been here,”
Pointing to a photo of her grandmother,
“These are the old vehicles we’d travel down from Geelong in.
“We’ve not always been on the same site. We originally began down by the bridge. We were the last camp before the bridge and then they closed that area off. Prior to that my grandfather used to come down in a horse and dray from Geelong. It would take him all day to get down here. He would bring young people from the church, a congregational church in Geelong. And they would camp down here with the family and then they would pack up and go home and it would take them all day to get home again.”
It doesn’t take Glenda that long to get home any more.
Glenda and her husband Lyall moved to Ocean Grove 13 years ago but have continued the traditional five week Christmas holiday ever since.
Now they take half a day to pack the caravan and just five minutes to travel the 1.5km journey to their holiday destination.
Lyall said: “A very good friend of mine who lives across the road is a senior sergeant in the police force and every year when I pack my van up to bring it down here he always says on your way down make sure you pull over and have a rest because you’re in for a long ride.”
Glenda said that the biggest draw card apart from the location – ocean one side, river the other – was the sense of community among other campers on the spit.
“We had camp concerts down here quite often. One of the things that I would do here is we’d raise money, like surf lifesaving or when the Tsunami hit we had a huge concert here, we had over 2,000 people came. We raised just over $3,000 that night.”
Glenda and her son Chris say they fear changes proposed for the site may damage that community atmosphere.
“You know that you’re safe if you need help there is going to be someone there to help you. It’s just that lovely community feeling.”
Chris actually proposed to his wife Kristy on the spit in the middle of winter.
Casting her mind back Glenda said there were a few characters along the way.
“Chief Little Wolf, he used to have the hamburger stall opposite us at the end of the bridge.
“Then there was old Nancy, she’d been been coming down here for about 70 years. We used to call her old Mrs Ironpants. She was just gorgeous. She was a real character.
“The hamburger stall was a long time before the potato seller Jack. He started about 27 years ago. He’d give regular campers free potatoes. He set up a little playground for the kids, a putting green, table tennis for the kids.”
When Glenda first came on holiday to the spit she was just 3 months old.
“We lived in St Albans Geelong. Dad still worked. He would travel in and out to work so that we could have a holiday.
We just had the best time. It was just a great way to grow up, a great holiday.
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