40 Mile Beach; unbelievable coastal camping near Karratha

Western Australia is king of beach camping options (you can find 23 great options at Beach Camping WA). There’s more amazing coastal camp grounds than you could explore in months of full time travel, and despite trying our best we still haven’t seen them all.

We recently stayed at 40 Mile Beach though, and thoroughly enjoyed our stay. If you are looking for an easy to access coastal camp that has a boat ramp, plenty of spots to camp, fishing to die for and a chance at mud crabs, this might be for you!

Where is 40 mile beach?

You’ll find this place 65 kilometres West of Karratha, at the end of 40 mile beach road.

How is the road into 40 Mile Beach?

The road into 40 mile was excellent when we did it, and the grader was busy doing the last parts of it.

Given the number of different vehicles in there though, its obviously maintained relatively regularly and would be classified as a good condition gravel road.

What vehicles does it suit?

Any vehicles would be OK to get into 40 mile beach. Expect some corrugations, but big RV’s, buses, 4WDs, caravans and boats would be just fine to tow in providing you drive to the conditions.

Where can you camp at 40 Mile Beach?

I was astounded at the sheer size of the camping area at 40 mile beach. It is massive in the main section, and then you have a smaller camp on the right hand side as you come in, and there are more camp sites along the mangroves than you can poke a stick at.

Heading south you’ll eventually get to a sign that says no camping beyond this point, and that’s as far as you can go. All of the sites that you can camp at are numbered, and labelled for easy use, but there’s a lot of sites, and they are all pretty decent size.

What amenities are there at 40 Mile Beach?

40 mile has a boat ramp (nothing special; basically a beach launching area), a couple of dump points and toilets and that is it. There is a full time caretaker to give you any advice or information that you need, but there are no other amenities.

Do you need to book?

Booking is essential, and is done online. 40 mile can be extremely busy and if you don’t book in advance, expect to be turned away.

40 Mile beach fishing

The fishing at 40 mile is hugely popular, and for good reason. If you have a boat your options are pretty much unlimited. If you are just shore based, you still have plenty of options and we caught a couple of trevally and a nice mangrove jack with limited effort, just flicking lures off the beach and rocks.

40 mile beach access

Just below the main camp you can drive your 4WD onto the ‘beach’ which is a short track before heading back up the top. There’s a heap of rocks that you wouldn’t be able to drive on anyway.

If you want proper beach access though, head out away from 40 mile beach and turn left at the mini camp on the way in. You can drive north and south from here along the beach which is quite compact, and find plenty of places to kick back on your own, or to wet a line.

40 Mile beach mud crabs

A huge number of the camp sites are right next to the mangroves, and then further south there are a handful of creeks. This is all mud crab territory, and we did hear of people getting them right out the front of camp. 

We chose to head out at night a couple of times and walk the creeks, which was a lot of fun despite the bugs. We managed to get a couple of mud crabs, but spent a long time trying to ID them as it was our first time catching them. 

We were just using a scoop net, and we picked them up in the creeks themselves. We spent many hours during the day trying to find them in holes with no success, but we are total amateurs when it comes to mud crabbing!

Is 40 Mile Beach worth a stay?

Gnoorea Point and 40 Mile Beach is another spectacular coastal camp site, that’s different again to so many other places that we’ve been to. I’d say its easily as good as Cleaverville, and has some similarities to Cape Keraudren and Pardoo Station.

Our kids had a ball exploring all of the different areas, we had fun fishing and its close enough to head out to explore other parts of the Pilbara coastline.

Want to see more? Here’s our YouTube video of the beautiful 40 mile beach area:

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