devastating 2022\u201323 River Murray floods.<\/a><\/p>\nThis year’s hot weather shows a stark contrast at the campsite’s popular pool compared to this time three years ago.<\/p>\n
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The Kingston on Murray Caravan Park pool was part of the trail of destruction left by the 2022 floods in South Australia’s Riverland. \/ It’s now back in action and as popular as ever with campers.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a lot of hard work from everyone, a lot of support from the local community, the staff we’ve got are fantastic,” Mr Calvert said.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a little bit quieter than normal through the Christmas and New Year period, but as long as we keep the wheels turning, that’s enough.”<\/p>\n
Visitors from all over took advantage of the typically cooler conditions of the early morning.<\/p>\n
Levi and Matilda are from Mount Gambier in the state’s south-east.<\/p>\n
Their families were staying through to the weekend, when the weather was set to become more manageable.<\/p>\n
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Levi (left) and Matilda are visiting the caravan park in the Riverland with their families for the first time. (ABC Riverland: Jackson Byrne)<\/p>\n
“We’ve been to the pool every day,” Levi said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a once-off thing; we never usually go to the river.”<\/p>\n
Mariah Taylor and her family from Trafalgar in regional Victoria were also bearing the brunt of the heat not too far away at the Berri Riverside Holiday Park.<\/p>\n
“We were pretty much too far in to turn around and make any other choices,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve done a lot of swimming, water, the kids are loving the pool, a lot of eating out in cool restaurants, so we’re managing perfectly fine.”<\/p>\n
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Mariah Taylor and her family are taking advantage of cooler morning conditions to survive the extreme heat. (ABC Riverland: Jackson Byrne)<\/p>\n
Council doing its bit to help<\/p>\n
The Loxton Waikerie Council has also taken steps to keep its residents cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It has extended the opening hours for both the Loxton and Waikerie swimming pools.<\/p>\n
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The Loxton pool’s hours have been extended, with residents afforded free entry for the summer. (ABC Riverland: Jackson Byrne)<\/p>\n
Last year, it made entry free for all residents in the council areas.<\/p>\n
Mayor Trevor Norton said the initiatives have brought the pools back to life.<\/p>\n
“It was to try and bring the community together, address a bit of cost-of-living pressure, so our residents could come down, exercise, get cool or just connect with other people,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It gives people a chance to come down and cool off after work or get out of the house and refresh.”<\/p>\n
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Trevor Norton has extended opening hours and made pool access free for residents. (ABC Riverland: Jackson Byrne)<\/p>\n
Mr Norton said the council’s swimming pools\u00a0were the “number one priority” when they surveyed the community last year.<\/p>\n
He said free entry at the public pools had already proven immensely popular.<\/p>\n
“In Loxton, season tickets were previously [sold to] around 180 [people], they’re now about 1,000,” Mr Norton said.<\/p>\n
“In Waikerie, where they were really dragging along at about 50 for the last two or three years, they’ve now reached almost 500.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hot summer days do not come as a surprise for those living in South Australia’s Riverland.\u00a0 Read more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,1678,3286,75078,44,118994,6878,1124],"class_list":["post-400531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-heat","tag-heatwave","tag-murray-river","tag-news","tag-river-murray","tag-riverland","tag-south-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n