Cossack; brilliant beach front camping near Point Samson
Western Australia has some of the best camping in the world, and we’re on a mission to find the best of the best, for you. Want to know a ripper spot that’s cheap, right on the beach and truly magnificent?
One of our more memorable nights on our recent 6 weeks away was at Cossack, camped in a small, private camp site metres away from the beach. It is a magic location that you should most certainly check out if you are in the area.
If you look closely you’ll just see a couple of vehicles parked at the top of the beach in the below photo, where we were lucky enough to enjoy some magnificent weather, before moving onto Pardoo Station.
Where is Cossack?
You’ll find Cossack 35 minutes East of Karratha, 12 minutes from Point Samson, 8 minutes from Wickham and 10 minutes from Roeburne. It’s a short drive off the main highway on your way past, and well worth pulling in for a break, lunch, to stretch your legs or to stay a couple of nights.
What’s there?
Cossack is a tiny town, full of interesting history. There’s a museum, Café and some very scenic places to pull over and soak it up. Accommodation is available for those who don’t want to camp. Cossack is certainly a unique, and peaceful location that is missed by the majority of tourists in favour of the much larger towns.
Cossack was a huge port in the past, with majority of shipping now coming and going from Karratha, Dampier and Port Hedland.
Camping at Cossack
If you want to camp at Cossack, you have to book online well in advance. You can camp at Butchers Inlet, or Settlers Beach. The latter is the better camp site by a country mile, but either are worth a stay.
To book, head to Cossack.org and put your details in. There are only 8 sites, which makes it nice and private, but also quite busy and competitive. It’s only $20 per camp site per night, which is an absolute steal.
You must be 100% self sufficient, including the ability to capture all of your grey water. Our Reconn R2 does not have this ability, so we knocked up a 20L container and hose from the sink going to it. We skipped a shower for that night too, as we have no way of collecting the water from our current camping shower set up.
Fishing at Cossack
I had a bit of a flick around the main beach, and we took the kids to the river to hook some smaller fish. I’m told you can get some decent salmon off the beach here, which would be a heap of fun. We were more interested in keeping the kids happy, and catching 10-15cm fish off the rock walls was a great way to do that.
It’s a beautiful spot
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Cossack, and Sarah mentioned a number of times that she would have loved to stay for a few more nights. Its quiet, peaceful, has a beautiful beach and its the perfect place to chill out and relax for a few days.
Here’s our YouTube video of what we got up to in the Cossack and Dampier region:
