Pet Friendly Caravan Parks around Broome

Great news for anyone travelling with their dog to Broome! 🐶

As of tourist season, 2020 Roebuck Bay Caravan Park, now called Discovery Park Broome, is now pet friendly.  All you need to do is inform them at the time of booking 08 9192 1366 and sign a pet policy!

Pet Friendly Caravan Parks around Broome are scarce to say the least!

Compounded with the availability of sites in the peak of the tourist season, travelling with your pets to Broome and the Kimberley can be very frustrating with the majority of Caravan Parks not allowing pets.

Sometimes the only available alternative is to put your pets into boarding kennels.

A good alternative when both the Pet Motel and Broome Veterinary Hospital are full is to post to the Broome Community Noticeboard on Facebook and ask the locals, so many dog lovers in town 🙂

I ran into a lovely lady the other day, Janelle Saffrey who runs the Boab Tree BnB, who loves animals and looks after pets, short and long term.  She says she often looks after pets for people who have booked a day trip tour, or longer tours, or just people staying in town who are having trouble getting their pets looked after.  Her number is 0409 293 387.

Broome Veterinary Hospital

Broome Pet Motel –  25 McDaniel Rd, Broome WA 6725 –  Phone: (08) 9193 5384

In Town Pet Friendly Locations

Tarangau Caravan Park, is partly pet friendly. They only accept small inside pets for 9 months of the year. Unfortunately not during June, July or August, the main tourist season.

There is an overflow area at Broome Pistol Club, that allows Pets. Tel: 08 9192 6181

Out of Town Pet Friendly Locations

20 km from Broome is Broome’s Gateway Caravan Park
30 km east from Broome is the Roebuck Plains Roadhouse Phone: (08) 9192 1880
128km south of Broome is Barn Hill Station (I read somewhere, sometime ago that the grass seeds around the country of Barn Hill can cause bad infections for dogs with long coats).
160km south of Broome is Port Smith Caravan Park.

You can take your pets to camping areas north of Broome such as Willie Creek, Quandong, James Price Point and Coulomb Point.

Pets are not allowed into the Dampier Peninsular, all the way to the tip at Cape Leveque.

After receiving many comments regarding Broome Caravan Parks Pet Unfriendly policy, I decided to ask the Caravan Park owners themselves as to their reasons.

This first response is from Broome Caravan Park

Broome Caravan Park owners have been operating their park for 16 years.  For the first 8 years they allowed pets but after relentless problems, including an incident where a dog owner physically threatened Donna (the Manager), it was decided enough was enough!

At one stage they tried instigating a dog bond and if people were found not to have been responsible, then their bond was forfeit.  Dog owners forfeiting their bonds, once again became very aggressive towards staff.  Staff were threatened when asking owners to tie up their pets and one of the owners was chased by a dog.

Naturally, everybody that arrived at the park, assured the owners that their dog was very well behaved.

Responsible behaviour included:

i) not leaving your dog at your site while you went out for the day and the dog was left barking and disturbing other tenants;
2) cleaning up all poops;
3) not letting your dog wee on peoples tents or cars;
4) keeping your dog under control so that there were no dog fights or risk of danger to other people;
5) not letting your dog jump up on other people;
6) not letting your dog wander into other peoples tents or caravan sites.

To me, these seem like pretty fair restrictions for dog owners.  For Donna now, she says that the atmosphere is totally different.

So at the end of the day is it the caravan park owners fault or is it the pet owners themselves?

Tarangau Caravan Park’s response

As some people may not be aware Tarangau Caravan Park does accept small inside pets for 9 months of the year from 1 September thru until 1 June.

We find that the majority of pet owners are extremely responsible people and are more than happy to abide by our pet policy. We believe that our pet policy is very reasonable and is common sense however you always get those that try and push the boundaries.

Unfortunately, we do have a few incidents each season and it seems to be these pet owners that get aggressive and abusive towards Management and Staff (and hence make it harder for everybody else). We do not have a dog bond as again this can lead to further negative confrontation.

Recently a dog was not on a lead and it proceeded to bite the Manager of the Park on the leg – notwithstanding that its owners claimed that their pet was extremely well behaved. It was bad enough that the Manager got bitten but what if it had been a customer or even worse a child?

All we ask is that pet owners respect our pet policy, their neighbours within the caravan park and their surrounds.

More to come!