As we were on holidays we were relaxing and did not really have as an objective to plan exactly were we were going. A bit of a contrast to my normal work life.
On our journey after staying in Jindabyne, we headed for Batemans Bay, we wanted to stay there, however "unluckily" all of the places were booked out and we started looking around for where else to stay. Eventually we called ahead and found a place in a small "town" or even village of South Durras, which is 15 km North of Batemans Bay. It's normal permanent population is about 400 people. The place where we were going to stay was the BIG4 South Durras Holiday Park. We managed to find the last spot for tents for that day.
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What was so interesting about visiting this park that is so worth writing about? Well I found out the it is a water sustainable holiday park. What was more interesting is that that the managers went about this in a very unassuming way, for them it was something normal. When we checked in, they told us that the water in the park was rain harvested tank water, that if we wanted to drink it that we should boil it. This was a "bit" novel.
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| This is where we set up our tent, right next to 2 water tanks that collect water from the roofs. |
The water for the showers and WCs is from bore water.
This is the amenities block. From these, the black water, from the WCs, goes to a septic tank, from which the effluent goes into an infiltration trench for leachate absorption. The grey water, from the showers, skips the septic tanks and goes into the infiltration trench. The infiltration area is located in the back of the holiday park where the trees and vegetation are able to "consume" and absorb the leachate, eventually the purified water will re-enter the water cycle, either through evapotranspiration or by going into the aquifers.
The septic tank is cleaned from solids when required, that can usually be every 12 months.
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| Rainwater harvesting tank of the men's amenities block. |
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Water tanks that harvest from the roof and supply the holiday park's kitchen.This is an authentically practically closed water cycle, with no requirement for energy. Here the "energy water nexus" has been broken. |
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Not only has the water footprint of this development been negligible, but also the biological footprint. As we can see that kangaroos are happy to share in the presence of guests, they have not gone away, being a testimony of reduced, if not practically non-existent, impact on the environment. |
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| Practically every raised horizontal surface is to capture rainwater that is then managed in a decentralized manner. |
They have a capacity of about 70,000 litres of above ground water storage and are able to provide enjoyable accommodation to more than 400 people when the holiday park is at full capacity. This is amazing considering that the town of South Durras itself has a permanent population of about the same number. It does this with a water footprint of practically 0. It captures and reuses as much water as it needs, it discharges no contaminated water, be it stormwater, greywater or blackwater. Its roads are of permeable gravel, and it's hard surfaces capture water. Greywater and Blackwater is managed on site. It has no pipes going in and no pipes out carrying contaminated water. All of the water management is done with practically no power consumption except for a few small pumps that have a minimum power consumption.
This is an example of how sustainable water management can be done, in a not too complex way, on a commercial scale. Many people say that this sort of application is not complicated on a small domestic scale, however to do something larger is more problematic. This is proof that it can be done on a larger scale, what is more these are totally scalable solutions.
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