Meeniyan Reserve; great camping in a country town
In 18 months on the road, we’ve camped at all sorts of places, ranging from stunning national parks through to bitumen car parks, the occasional caravan park and a number of shire run campgrounds. Our most recent stay was at a place called Meeniyan Reserve, and it’s a beautiful, quiet country town that is surprisingly popular with those calling through.
We came from Bear Gully Campground on the coast, which was also a pretty excellent camp site.
Where is Meeniyan Reserve?
This town is a fairly short drive from Wilsons Prom, and not far from Bear Gully Campground on the way to Traralgon.
What does it cost to camp?
The camp site is a donation camp, with a recommendation of $10 per night, which is very fair.
Do you need to book?
No, and you can’t anyway. Simply arrive, find yourself a spot, drop your donation in and away you go.
What’s at Meeniyan Reserve?
Meeniyan Reserve is the town recreation grounds. There’s netball courts, a big oval, lawn bowls, a really decent playground for the kids, a small set of skate ramps, public toilets a dump point and plenty of grassy areas to pull up and stay.
What makes it fantastic though, is that you can walk about 100 metres from camp into the town, where you’ve got a great IGA, a number of small restaurants and plenty of places to get a drink. We promised the kids food at the bakery if they did their school work well, and surprise surprise, it worked quite well.
There’s two sections that you can camp at in Meeniyan Reserve, with the primary area closer to town, and the public toilets. There’s a fair chunk of room to choose, and we noticed a number of groups pull up and make their own little circle, to kick back and have a good time.
Would we recommend a stay here again?
Whilst these sort of camps are not generally what we are looking for (we love national park and free camps), it’s a ripper, and great value. For an overnighter, you really can’t go wrong, and we love supporting small towns in ways like this.
