Bruntons Bridge Campground; amazing camping near Walhalla
After deciding to head to Walhalla to have a look around, we had two choices of campgrounds that appealed to us; Bruntons Bridge Campground, and Coopers Creek. We ended up at Coopers Creek Campground because it was quiet enough, beautiful and easy to get to, but we headed out to Bruntons Bridge Campground the next day, and realised we probably should have made the extra effort!
Where is Bruntons Bridge Campground?
You’ll find this place not too far out of Walhalla itself, or you can come up from the southern end with it being only 39km from Traralgon.
How do you get there?
Like most places in the Victorian High Country, there’s a number of different ways you can get to Bruntons Bridge Campground. The easiest, and most simple way is to head south from Walhalla, along Happy Go Lucky Road, which turns into Bruntons Bridge Road. This departs from the Walhalla Historic area.
Alternatively, you can come in from the south off a number of different tracks and gravel roads, and then you need to cross the Thomson River.
Do you need a 4WD to get there?
I think you’d fairly safely get an AWD vehicle in here, but if you are towing anything a 4WD is a good idea. Certainly if its been wet, you’d want a 4WD, and if you are coming from the south you will need one, even in summer. I had a look at the river crossing towards the end of March, and it was at least 500mm deep in a number of sections, and that’s probably about as low as the water level gets.
If you want to explore some more tracks though, here’s a post we wrote on the Walhalla 4WD Tracks.
What’s the campground like?
The Bruntons Bridge Campground is tiered, into multiple levels. There are two amazing camp sites with river views very close to camp, right at the bottom, and then there’s a heap of camp sites further up. They are all gravel, nice and level, and decent sized.
Being tiered you are likely to end up with others looking into your camp site (some of them), but there’s not much alternative with the landscape here.
About Bruntons Bridge
One of the major attractions here is the stunning bridge itself. This was built many moons ago, and refurbished, but a lot of the original construction is still in use, which shows how well it was done. It was originally used for horse and cart, and was damaged in a bush fire, but is an engineering work of art, and its pretty awesome too.
You can walk across the bridge, and read the sign, which has some pretty fascinating information.
Can you tow something into Bruntons Bridge?
If you have the clearance, and off road ability you should be able to tow any decent camper trailer in here. We’d happily tow our Reconn R2 in, and I reckon you’d even get larger things in, but you take a risk if you meet anyone else coming the other way.
What does it cost to stay?
This is another truly awesome, and completely free campground. It easily competes with a lot of the National Park camping in Western Australia, and you’d be paying $15 per adult to camp at any of them, I guarantee it.
I can’t get over how well set up the camp sites are, and that they are completely free. It’s absolutely awesome, and I wish there was more of this over in WA.
Would we recommend it?
We really liked Bruntons Bridge, and felt like we probably should have pushed on further to here with our Reconn R2. We’d have easily been able to tow it in, and the two camp sites next to the river are private, stunning and really beautiful. It’s certainly much quieter than Coopers Creek.
Of course, Coopers Creek Campground is also amazing so we don’t have much to complain about, but Bruntons Bridge takes it to another level.
