This Summer we loaded our Opus OP4 camper, 3 kids and 1 crazy Cattle Dog and headed up to the Sapphire Coast in NSW. We embarked on the 9 hour drive, which didn’t seem like much at all compared to last years Nullarbor trip! Although, the windy roads and the heavy rain was a lot more taxing on the driver (not me), than the straight open easy road heading West. We did a one night stop over at a cute little bush caravan park in Nicolson, just outside of Bairnsdale, called Lakes Bushland Caravan Park. Which had big sites, a swimming pool and a fenced in dog off-leash play area, which I would highly recommend as a stop-over if you are headed that way.

When we arrived a Dalmeny Beach it was a wet afternoon, the campground seems very chaotic on first glance, and many of the sites are sloped, you can see some very creative ways people have propped up their caravans to make them level, some of them a bit worrisome. Our normal levellers where not sufficient, we had to borrow some planks of wood and a friends Maxx tract to get it to the correct height, also worrying for me but my husband assured me it was ok (debatable).

What the campsite lacks in flat surfaces and amentities it makes up for in location to the beach, its hard to get much closer to the beach, there’s an IGA right across the road and a cute coffee shop and fish and chips shop among other things. You are just a short drive/bike ride into Narooma and you can access a myriad of beautiful beaches all the way along the coast. The best thing, and what my family was most excited about was the epic Narooma Mountain Bike park that was only about 4kms away. The second best thing was Big Niles Brewery, just a couple of kms up the road, which I think we may have visited everyday we were there, fantastic beers on offer and on weekends they often have a food truck too.

Dalmeny Beach itself is not dog friendly unfortunately (and they have 1080 baits in the scrub apparently) but there are some fantastic year round off-leash dog beaches between Dalmeny and Narooma, Josh’s Beach (before 9am and after 5pm), Duesbury and Barr Beach to name a few so we did still manage to get some good family beach time in with the dog!

The weather was the only downside to this holiday, we had torrential rain 3 out of 5 nights and some steamy humid weather during the day. Luckily we left before the big storm front was heading in for the day we were leaving. So, perhaps Summer is not the best time if the weather can be this unpredictable!

Keep your eyes open for some new Dalmeny Beach photography art prints coming to my website soon, as I couldn’t resist bringing my camera pretty much everywhere with me!

Camping at Dalmeny Beach, NSW

5 of my Favourite Stops on The Great Ocean Road