Cobaw State Forest Camping; free and close to Melbourne
After a couple of magic nights at Amblers Crossing in Lerderderg State Park, we were keen to move, and find somewhere with decent internet reception to arrange accommodation for the upcoming long weekend.
We knew leaving it too late would mean struggling to find a place to stay, and so a plan was hatched to head to Cobaw State Forest, and spend the night there, whilst exploring some 4WD tracks.
Where is Cobaw State Forest?
From Melbourne, Cobaw State Forest is only an hours drive, which makes it a pretty easy choice for a weekend away from the big smoke.
What’s the access like?
The main Cobaw Campground is easily accessible for all types of vehicles, including caravans. It’s a windy, semi steep hill to drive up that is all gravel, but its in good condition and you can take it as slow as you need to.
The actual campgrounds are massive, and there’s heaps of room to turn around, so you shouldn’t have any issues in anything normal size.
Cobaw State Forest Camping
We spent a night camped at the main Cobaw Campground, right near the corner of Ridge Road and Devanney Road. This is the biggest, easiest to access and primary camp ground, but given Cobaw is a state forest, there are a huge number of places you can camp for the night, and its completely free.
Pole Creek has a campground that was closed when we went through, but there’s a heap of clearing around the place that you can camp at.
Now, I want to make a point of stating that you need to look after this place. I was disappointed at the state of the campground when we arrived. There was bits of plastic, rubber, glass and cans around in a number of places. The fire pit was full of dirt and rubbish, and we filled a bag up with rubbish, leaving the bits that were too large.
If you don’t look after places like this, you’ll lose access, and that’s no good for anyone.
4WD tracks in Cobaw State Forest
If you are after difficult to extreme 4WD tracks, you’ll find plenty in the Cobaw State Forest to keep you busy. We’ve got a post dedicated to Cobaw 4WD tracks, which covers it in far more detail.
See the vlog
Want to see more? Here’s our vlog of the area:
Would we recommend it?
We liked this place. We went during the week and had the entire campground to ourselves, with only about 4 or 5 vehicles going past that day. I reckon on weekends, and long weekends it would get busy, with dirt bike riders and 4WDers, and its probably not the quietest place to camp at.
We really enjoyed it, and found the 4WD tracks to be fantastic. If you want an easy to access, free campground with fantastic Telstra reception, you can’t go wrong with Cobaw State Forest Campground.
