Snowy River Free Camping
Victoria is king of free camping. Seriously; we’ve found more free camp sites here than anywhere else in Australia, and we truly love the region. If you’re chasing an easy to get to, picturesque and nice place to camp on the Snowy River, you’ll find it just out of Orbost, heading down the river.
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Where can you camp?
There’s a huge number of places you can camp at on the Snowy River. Both the West and East sides have places you can pull into and stay, and they’re pretty obvious with mown, cleared grassy areas.
What side of the river is best?
In our opinion, the West side of the Snowy River, heading towards the coastline is best. This is much quieter, has sites that don’t really accommodate multiple camping setups, and its nice and grassy, and mown.
The East side is still fine, but the camp sites are larger and you end up with more people camping in each one, and its right next to the main road that goes down to Marlo. This is also a busy dairy farming part of the region, and you’ll hear and smell the cows much more clearly on the East side.
Amenities at the Snowy River Free Camping
Asides from a picnic table and some makeshift fire pits, there are no amenities at the Snowy River Free Camping areas. You need your own toilet, rubbish bin, water and everything else. Be respectful of the free camps, or they’ll get closed.
It gets busy
It’s worth noting that due to how easily accessible these sites are, they get busy quickly. You could possibly squeeze into one later in the afternoon, but you should expect to find a few people camped in at least some of the sites. We drove the West side, and missed out on the first site because we naively thought we’d find something better.
We ended up on the East side, but there were only a couple of spots left, and where we ended up camping was OK, but certainly nothing great.
Check out Woods Point as an alternative
If you’re prepared to drive around 30 minutes north of Orbost, you can camp at Woods Point, which is nothing short of spectacular. This is only really suitable for 4WD’s and 2WD’s with a bit of clearance (certainly no massive motorhomes or buses), but it’s a spectacular part of the world with its own little beach on a stunning corner of the Snowy River.
