K'gari, Great Sandy National Park

Reading the numbers

K'gari, Great Sandy National Park has 35 campgrounds in the app, all from QPWS, and it heads the Queensland ranking by campground count. The entries shown below fall into two kinds. Nine are numbered beach camping zones, each grouping several named spots, such as Govi and Wongai in zone 1 or Maheno and Wahba in zone 5. The rest are set camping areas such as Dundubara, Waddy Point, Central Station and the creek sites at Bowarrady, Coongul and Coolooloi.

Several areas appear twice, once as a tent site and once as a trailer site: Dundubara, Waddy Point Top, Waddy Point beachfront and Central Station all do. Pick the entry that matches your setup, because the facilities listed differ between the pair. Dundubara’s tent entry lists drinking water, for example, while its trailer entry does not. All 4 entries with a camping fee listed (11%) are tent-site entries, so a blank fee on the trailer version is no evidence that it costs nothing.

Toilets are listed at 89% of campgrounds and showers at 66%, but drinking water at only 40%, which is the gap worth planning around. Camper trailer sites and tent-beside-car sites are each listed at 80%. Campfires and generators are each listed as allowed at 63% of sites, which is a general listing rather than permission for a particular day. In the list, Cornwells, Eli, One Tree, Wongai and Wathumba carry “(fenced)” in their names; the data says nothing more, so read the official page for what that means for your stay.

Fees, bookings and closures for each beach zone and camping area sit with QPWS and can change, so open the official link for the exact area before you travel rather than relying on a neighbouring entry.