How to choose a campsite in Australia

Check access

Confirm sealed or unsealed road, clearance, four-wheel-drive requirements, creek crossings, site length and turning room. Rental and insurance restrictions can be stricter than the road itself.

Read recent official alerts and call the manager when a large rig or late arrival is involved.

Match the facilities

Decide whether the night needs potable water, toilets, showers, power, laundry, a dump point or mobile coverage. Do not treat an unknown facility as available.

For simple camps, arrive self-contained and carry waste out.

Read the weather around the site

Avoid exposed coast in strong wind, creek flats before heavy rain and dead trees in storms. Shade matters in heat, but overhead branches can be dangerous.

Choose the safe site over the photogenic one.

Read the ground before you commit

Walk the pitch before driving onto it, particularly in a heavy vehicle. Check for softness, hidden stumps, ant nests and whether you can get out again if it rains overnight.

Look up. Eucalypts drop limbs without warning, a habit serious enough that they are widely known as widow makers, and camping directly under large gums is a genuine risk rather than a theoretical one.

Check the drainage. A slight hollow that is comfortable in dry weather becomes a puddle in a storm, and a dry creek bed is the most dangerous ground available in flash flood country.

Sun, wind and where the shade goes

Work out where the morning sun will hit. In the north and inland, a tent in full sun becomes unusable by seven in the morning, and shade in the afternoon is worth more than a view.

Wind rises in the evening in most coastal and inland areas. Pitch with the smallest profile into the prevailing wind, use every guyline, and bring awnings in before you go to bed rather than when they start moving.

In the tropics, a breeze is worth seeking out because it suppresses insects. In the desert, shelter from wind matters more because the nights are cold and the wind carries dust.

Water, and how close is too close

Being near water is pleasant and comes with constraints. In the tropical north, never camp within about fifty metres of any waterway because of crocodiles, and in flood country stay well above the obvious flood level.

Elsewhere, camping close to water concentrates impact on the most fragile ground and blocks wildlife access to a drinking source. Many parks specify a minimum distance for exactly this reason.

Mosquitoes and sandflies are worst near still water at dawn and dusk. A pitch fifty metres back with a breeze is frequently far more comfortable than one on the bank.

Neighbours and arriving late

Arrive with daylight to spare. Choosing a pitch, levelling a vehicle and assessing hazards are all much harder in the dark, and a site that would obviously be wrong at four is easy to accept at nine.

At a busy ground, set up within your allocated space and leave room for whoever comes after you. Generators, bright lights and late noise are the three things that make you unpopular fastest.

Keep a legal fallback identified before you arrive. A full campground at dusk is a normal event rather than bad luck, and having somewhere to go removes the pressure to make a poor decision.

Insects and where they concentrate

Mosquitoes and midges concentrate near still water at dawn and dusk, and bush flies inland are worst in the middle of a warm day. A breezy site is dramatically more comfortable than a sheltered one in both cases.

Ants are the underrated problem. Check the ground for trails and nests before pitching, because a tent placed on an ant highway is a night nobody enjoys.

Walk the site once more before you leave in the morning to check nothing has been left behind, which is when most gear is lost.

Look up before pitching, because eucalypts drop limbs without warning and camping directly beneath large gums is a genuine rather than theoretical risk.

Places along the way