Brisbane to Townsville | Tuesday Travels

I received a message from Jack today, this isn't a rare occurrence but the message is notable for this post. 'Find some free campsites in between Brisbane and Townsville.' A task that I was happy to oblige to. After a morning full of exam, cashew nuts and donuts forgetting college for an hour was the exact medicine I needed to de-stress and relax for an hour. Today, as you've probably guessed, forgetting about college came in the form of Googling different places along the east coast of Australia adjacent to the words free campsite.

When I got Jack's message my first thought was 'where's Townsville?' So naturally that was the first thing I found. I'm very happy to report that all images show a paradise. Long sandy beaches, green foliage, clear blue waters. Just what I need at the moment, two months isn't long, I remind myself for the fourth time today.

After taking in and admiring the wonder of Townsville beaches I got to work. I began by having a look on Tripadvisor (definitely a good place to start if you have any travel questions, queries, confusions) to see if anyone else had done the same route. I was glad to find they had, no not with free campsites. The thing about Australia is that some counties offer free stop-over points for travellers or people passing through whereas others don't, this was something I was yet to find out. However, the Tripadvisor post did give me a few ideas of places we could stop. A few of them I recognised as Jack has mentioned them previously.

So I narrowed down a few places, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Airlie Beach and obviously Townsville. I began Googling free campsites in these places. However, this proved difficult. A couple of the places don't offer free-stop-overs and others just seem to not put anything google, clearly they don't need the tourist trade.

Anyway after about 30 minutes of stress levels rising due to finding one place named 'Alligator creek' and another warning me of saltwater crocodiles, I finally stumbled across a gem.

Courtesy of caravantour.com

So this website has done all the hard work for me. It has found all the free campsites/stopover points on the east coast (I think all of Australia but I was only looking at the east coast) and pinpointed them on a map. I proceeded to find the ones closest to the places I'd already picked out and I think I may have done as requested in about ten minutes of the hour I spent on the task.

This new find is definitely something me and Jack will use throughout our trip. These free stop over points that are all over Australia are perfect when you're travelling the distance that we are and just for travelling in general. And having them all pinpointed on a map for you makes them easy to find and the process a lot less stressful. I still didn't find one as close to Airlie Beach as we'd have liked, somewhere we both want to go, but we'll get as close as we can or you never know we might treat ourselves.

We'll see, but for now cheap and cheerful it is.