Suggest away! The committee has had a fair bit of discussion about this during meetings but we've not landed on anything concrete yet. There have been some incredible places suggested.
Here's a couple of questions that would help us out:
1) Would people object to travelling 1200km from Sydney in order to stay at a truly iconic place?
2) Would people object to higher costs per night in order to stay at this place?
3) Would people object to having to take an entire week to do "the muster" - in other words, the Muster is a Monday-arvo to Friday-morning thing, leaving the surrounding weekends to get there and back?
4) Does anyone here object to being in South Australia?
5) How many of you have 1 woods, and would be willing to carry said toad-dispersal-device as far as Bundaberg Qld?
One of the troubles we're having with locations is that everywhere is becoming so expensive to visit/stay at. Janowen Hills was relatively cheap, but the committee spent more money than it received on providing not only the camping and 4WD fees and shirts and stickers and stuff, but the committee also bought some of the prizes we raffled off. We'd need sponsors who came to the party with a cheque book, not just some stock, in order to help us pay for camping costs let alone the rest of the stuff at some of these places.
Just take a look at
http://roverpark.com.au up near Tenterfield, in particular their Tarrifs (sic) page. $45 per day for unpowered sites per vehicle is reasonable IF you have 2 adults and 2 teenage kids. $85 if you want one of their on-site vans and - sit down for this - $500 if you want one of their cabins (2 cars max, 8 people max). That's what we have to deal with, and it's getting worse all the time.
Back when we had the first Muster at Ados4WD Peter wanted $5 per head per night and didn't want to know about any kid under 15. That was awesome, but because some idiots had been trashing the place and the local caravan park was complaining about the competition, he was upping the fees to $9 per head per night. That's $18 per person for a 2-night muster - quite manageable, and way less than what some of the other parks are asking. It must be said that the facilities at Ados were only reasonable (who remembers the showers!!) and the place is closed now anyway.
So let's get some feedback on how far people are willing to go. There are some fantastic places to visit - The Springs 4WD park comes to mind - but it has a price tag attached. How many people are going to be unable to make it if the price is too high?
What is also important when considering that last question is this: we're going to provide HEAPS of notice for the 2015 Muster, its location and hopefully some idea of the likely cost not only of entry, but of getting there (because some of the locations on the board are actually quite a distance away - I wasn't kidding about the golf club!). Having that much lead time would allow people to save up - let's say tickets are $80 and it'll cost $300 in fuel, you'd have 12 months to get that plus food and beer money (call it $600 for a man-I'm-completely-wasted weekend) and in reality that's $12.50 per week, $50 a month to save up.
So let's talk about what's possible?