Freshwater Point; perfect, protected beachfront camping

If you are looking for low cost, beach front camping north of Perth with amazing protection from strong southerly winds, Freshwater Point might be for you!

On our way to Horrocks, we were looking for somewhere we could spend a couple of nights right on the beach, and had a few options lined up.

We’d stayed at Cliff Head in the past and loved it, but when I looked at the forecast and saw 40 -50km/h winds from the south west, I was keen to find somewhere else.

Enter the idea for Freshwater Point/Bay, which is right between Knobby Head and Cliff Head, and is also looked after by the shire of Irwin.

Where is Freshwater Point?

You’ll find this place roughly 50km south of Dongara, literally 100 metres off Indian Ocean Drive, on a short gravel road. Its roughly 90km km north of Jurien Bay, or 60km north of Greenhead.

What’s at Freshwater Point?

Freshwater Point is just a nice, small bay with room for camping on the north and south ends. It’s quite small, has a number of old relics and has a great beach for walking up and down again.

Camping at Freshwater Point

If you want to spend a night here, it will cost you $20 per vehicle and is collected each day by a lovely lady who works for the Shire of Irwin.

There’s drop toilets available, and that’s it, so you need to be completely self sufficient.

You can choose to camp on the southern end which is best for bad southerly winds, or you can turn right as you come in and stay in the northern portion.

Commercial fishing

When we arrived, there was a seafood truck and 4WD sitting on the beach, and a big cray boat came roaring in towards shore as we were getting ready to set up. They unloaded box after box of crayfish into a small dinghy, brought it to shore and loaded it up before taking off in the vehicles.

This place is obviously used for commercial fishing, but they were friendly and no doubt exhausted from being up for most of the night catching crayfish.

Be prepared for the bee’s

We’ve camped with bad bee’s before. Sandy Cape is a good example of this, where it was so bad on one visit that we struggled to make cereal in the morning, or build sandwiches for lunch. The bees would just sit on everything with moisture on it, and it made the visit quite unpleasant during the day.

On our visit to Freshwater Bay, it was around 40 degrees during the day, and it didn’t take too long after arriving for the bees to also rock up, in significant numbers. They are chasing water, and will hang near anything that is moist including your wet bathers when you get out of the ocean.

We set a number of plates and bowls up away from camp, but they didn’t seem interested until later on in the afternoon, where we tipped several litres of water onto the plates and watched it disappear extremely quickly.

They are clearly under a lot of heat stress on the warm days, and will go everywhere to find anything that has moisture. At one stage, we had several hundred hanging around the camper kitchen, and when I went inside to get some bathers I had 5 come in and follow me. Not really what you want to happen!

If you don’t put the plates of water out, they will be all over you and its guaranteed someone will end up getting stung

These are super friendly bees, like they are at Sandy Cape too, and can be brushed away (or blown works best) without getting upset, and they really don’t pose much risk to you, unless you squash them (as my mum found out, and got stung after brushing something off her shorts).

That night, we decided we’d take off the next day, as the Bees were just too likely to get someone else. As it turned out, while we were packing up in the morning (and they were far worse) Dad got stung on his foot when a Bee landed between his foot and thong.

In the past when he’s been stung he has had all of his previous sites swell up including a number on his face. We got the sting out quickly, had him take medicine and the reaction was almost non existent, which was good to see.

It was a shame, as its such a stunning place and one that we’d come back to again in a heartbeat, when the weather isn’t so hot. We’ve stayed at Cliff head before and had no issues, and they also get terrible bee’s, so its just a case of watching out when the weather is seriously hot.

Now, its worth noting that the Bee’s have been bad in the warm weather from Wedge Island all the way up to near Dongara, which is a significant portion of coastline. You can read more about this here – Bee’s on the north west coast.

Could you launch a boat?

If you are familiar with beach launching, you’d have no issues getting a boat into the water at Freshwater Bay, and there’s some pretty amazing coastline not far out. We would have loved to have our tinny up there.

It’s a magic spot

If it weren’t for the bee’s, I reckon this would be one of our favourite camp sites. We had the entire place to ourselves, and despite a nasty southerly wind it was nice and protected in our little bay. The water was warm, and it’d make for a brilliant camp site when the weather cools down a bit and the Bee’s head home.

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