Sharp Park Camping
The Gold Coast in Queensland has some amazing attractions, but finding low cost, decent camping is becoming quite difficult. Fortunately, there’s a spot inland called James Sharp Memorial Park which allows camping, and its really, really good. It’s most commonly referred to as Sharp Park, so we’ll roll with that too.
If you’d said to us that we’d end up spending 6 nights here though, I’d probably have laughed at you, but that’s exactly what happened, and you know what? It’s a pretty good place to pull up for a while.
Where is Sharp Park?
You’ll find this place literally 5 minutes away from Canungra, and about 20 minutes from the top of Tamborine Mountain.
You can camp on both sides of the river
When you head out, you’ll likely see the sign for James Sharp Memorial Park and a banner flapping in the wind. This is on the East side of the Bridge, and is where the powered sites are. It’s substantially big too, with room for hundreds of people to pull in and camp.
If you go to the Western side of the bridge though, there’s another camping option which is still part of the same arrangement, but run by a separate caretaker. This area is much quieter, has some great sites overlooking the creek and we thought it was a better place to be.
What’s the campground like?
There’s not much to complain about James Sharp Memorial Park. It’s got nice flushing toilets, a tap for water from the creek, and a rainwater tap. There’s a big rubbish bin, a very friendly and funny caretaker and plenty of good, grassy sites that range from being sheltered under trees through to mainly out in the open.
We paid for 2 nights initially, to avoid the rain that was coming through and set the awning up, and extended it another day as the rain was not easing. We could have easily moved somewhere else, but we were feeling under the weather and there’s really not much else nearby that was suitable for us to camp at.
We ended up extending another 3 nights so we could see Tamborine Mountain properly, and head to both sides of Lamington National Park. I also wanted to get the coolant replaced, and top and bottom radiator hoses done on our 2016 Dmax and the good people at Cunungra Auto slotted us in, and even offered to drop us back out to camp.
You don’t get that sort of service in the big smoke! This was preventative maintenance, but I wanted to get the coolant replaced after rats broke our 4WD.
What can you do nearby?
There’s a ridiculous number of things to do nearby, and that played a big role in why we stayed for so long. People stay here to do the theme parks, Tamborine Mountain, Lamington National Park, Springbrook National Park, nearby towns and so much more.
