Darlington Park Camping
The scenic rim area in Queensland is a stunning part of the world, and there’s quite a few places where you can camp that are run by the shire. Darlington Park is another one of these, and after a number of nights at the beautiful Sharp Park, we decided to continue on and check it out.
Where is Darlington Park?
You’ll find this massive area roughly 20 minutes from Beaudesert, on a road that is relatively quiet during the day and much quieter at night. It’s on a beautiful little creek, and has plenty of options for all different types of camping.
What is the camping like?
The camping here is really good. You are quite close to the road, but its relatively quiet and not much of an issue. You can camp on either side of the road, in a number of places that are quite flat and easy to access the beautiful creek.
We opted to camp right next to the main bridge as it had great access for the kids to splash around in the creek, and we really enjoyed it. The road noise was not really a problem, with the only thing disturbing our stay being a camper trailer that burst into flames in the middle of the night, not far from us.
There’s a number of spots that have good shade, but you do need to be careful to avoid going too close to the Bunya Pines, or you might end up with a big cone dropping onto your head.
What does it cost to camp?
It’s $10 per adult per night to camp here, and $5 for kids over 5. Not exactly cheap, but compared to the alternatives nearby its pretty good value. This is a shire owned camp site that is leased out by the caretaker, and I’d hope that the money raised goes back into the shire.
Bird feeding at Darlington Park
Every day at 4PM, the caretaker (who’s awesome) feeds the birds out the front of the office/house. These are mainly little parrot, but there’s a number of corellas and pink and grey galahs too.
If you have kids, this is a pretty awesome experience; we had birds landing on us, and were feeding them from a little bird feeder that we could hold. Oliver and Cooper absolutely adored it, and it made a decent camp ground that much better.
Amenities
Darlington Park has a number of fire pits, and a couple of flushing toilets. There’s also a BBQ and picnic area, playground for the kids and plenty of room to run around.
What’s Burgess Park?
If you’re looking this place up, you’ll probably see that its called Darlington and Burgess Park. Burgess is another place further down the road that you can also camp at. We kept moving from here, and went to Koreelah Creek in NSW, but its another option.
Is it worth staying?
We only spent a night here as we were just passing through, but it’s a great place to camp. By the sounds of it, the weekends get very busy, and I’m not at all surprised. It’s easy to get to, scenic, great for all styles of camping and just a nice place to be.
I’d certainly go back, and reckon if you wanted a nice spot to pull up for a few days its well worth doing.
