Stewart River Free Camp; pristine camping near Cape York
On our way back down from the tip of Cape York, we were looking for decent free camping options and stumbled across the Stewart River Brons Block on Wikicamps, and decided to have a peak.
As it turns out, this was a magic place, and easily competes with the Ang-Gnarra campsite north of Coen, which is also free.
Where is this Stewart River camp site?
You’ll find this place just off the Peninsula Development Road (PDR) heading up to Coen. If you take the turn off towards Port Stewart, you’ll drive a couple of kilometres along a well maintained gravel road that comes to a creek crossing, and the camping is right here.
What are the camp sites like?
If you have a 4WD, you can camp in a heap of different locations. You might have to let tyres down where its soft, but there are a couple of spots where its harder, and you can get magic views of the creek, which is pretty awesome.
Watch where you drive
My tip for you is to think very carefully about where you drive, before its too late. I made a fairly quick decision to drive diagonally across the creek, and try and camp on a little sandy island, which didn’t end too well. The car started to sink down mid way across, and going backwards and forwards made it even worse.
I ended up with Maxtrax out that got me out, but it was a bit of mucking around and overall a waste of time and effort that could have easily been avoided.
Is the Stewart River worth a stay?
We really enjoyed our stay here. It’s far enough off the road that you only get a tiny portion of traffic going to and from Port Stewart, and other than that is completely peaceful and quiet.
