Camping with kids, and still enjoying it.

Rows of tents and vans under old cypress and tea-tree with the bay a few steps away.

It is the Victorian summer holiday in its most traditional form: kids on bikes all day, an esky, someone’s cricket set, the same families in the same spots for thirty years. Not wilderness, and not trying to be. The foreshore camping season runs across summer and the warmer shoulder weeks rather than all year — check the dates for the season you want before you plan around it.

Proper toilet blocks, drinking water and showers. Powered sites in some sections. No fires on the foreshore — this is the trade you make for the plumbing.

Point Nepean National Park is twenty minutes further on and has no camping of its own, so this is the base for it.

Best for

Families · First-timers

Skip if

Anyone after quiet. In January it is a small town, and it sounds like one.

BookingBooked through the Mornington Peninsula Shire rather than Parks Victoria. Peak summer sites are allocated well in advance and long-standing families hold a lot of them.

Dry open forest on a ridge, gravelly ground, kangaroos through the sites at dusk and koalas in the manna gums if you look up long enough.

It is not dramatic country, which is exactly why it works as a first night out: quiet, flat, and close enough to town that a disaster is only an hour from home. Spring is the reason people come: the wildflowers through the Brisbane Ranges are among the best in the state. Summer here gets hot and the fire risk is real, so most locals go elsewhere between December and February.

Long-drop toilets and picnic tables. No drinking water, no showers, no bins — carry every litre you will drink and take the rubbish home.

Anakie Gorge is a twenty-minute drive away and makes an easy morning walk before you pack up.

Best for

First-timers · Families · Couples

Skip if

Anyone hoping for water views or a swim — the Brisbane Ranges are dry country and the creeks are seasonal.

BookingSites are booked through Parks Victoria online. It is small, so a long weekend goes early; a midweek night is usually there for the taking.

A small, simple set of sites in regrowth forest on the plateau.

The forest here is young because of the 2009 fires and the country still shows it, which gives the place a particular quiet. It is close, it is easy, and it is a sensible place to find out whether your gear works. Cool on the plateau even in summer. Winter is cold and wet and the campground can close after storms.

Toilets and fireplaces. No drinking water, no showers, no bins.

Masons Falls is a fifteen-minute drive and takes about twenty minutes to walk — the easiest waterfall payoff of any camp this close to town.

Best for

First-timers · Families · Couples

Skip if

People wanting a river or a view — this is forest camping, and the views are a short drive away at the escarpment lookouts.

BookingParks Victoria online. Small, so weekends go, but midweek is usually open.

A big grassy flat beside the Gellibrand River under tall trees, with a short walk upstream to a waterfall and glow worms in the banks after dark on a still night.

It is the friendliest of the inland Otway camps and the one that suits a family with young children best. Green all year, wet most of it. The glow worms are best on warm, still, dark nights, which means summer.

Toilets and fireplaces on an open flat. No drinking water, no showers. The river needs treating.

Forrest is fifteen minutes away with a brewery, a bakery and the best mountain bike trails in the region, so a wet afternoon has somewhere to go.

Best for

Families · First-timers · Couples

BookingBooked online through Parks Victoria. Popular with Geelong families, so weekends fill from spring onwards.

Grassy terraces above the water with big gums, a swimming beach below and kangaroos that treat the place as theirs.

It is the most set-up camping in the park and the reason families come back every January: kids can be sent to the water and be visible the whole time. Summer is the season and the lake is warm enough to swim. Water levels drop through autumn, so the beach walks further out as the year goes on.

Flush toilets, hot showers and drinking water, which is unusual for a national park campground in Victoria and is precisely why it suits a first family trip.

The lake is a working water storage, so the shoreline moves. What was a beach at Easter can be a long walk down at Christmas.

Best for

Families · First-timers

Skip if

Anyone after solitude in January, when it runs at capacity.

BookingParks Victoria online. Christmas and January are allocated a long way ahead — think months, not weeks.

Flat grassy sites along the Little River with the razorback ridge of the Cathedral Range standing straight up behind you.

It is the biggest and most organised campground in the park, which makes it the one that suits a family or a first tent, and the walks start from the site rather than a drive away. Autumn and spring are ideal. Summer on the exposed ridge is punishing and the park closes on days of extreme fire danger; winter is cold and the rock gets slick.

Long-drop toilets, picnic tables and fireplaces. No drinking water, no showers, no bins — the river is not a supply.

Sugarloaf Peak by the Canyon Track is the walk people talk about, and it is steeper and more exposed than the sign suggests. Start early, take water, and turn around if the weather closes in.

Best for

Families · First-timers · Couples

Skip if

Anyone expecting an easy stroll — every walk from here goes up, and the Razorback is a genuine scramble.

BookingBooked through Parks Victoria online. Weekends between September and April go months ahead, especially the long weekends.

Hundreds of sites in tea-tree and banksia behind Norman Beach, with granite peaks above, orange lichen on the rocks and wombats walking through the campground at dusk as though they are paying rent.

It is the single best-known camping trip in Victoria and busier than any other, and it is still worth it. Autumn is the local’s answer: warm water, empty tracks, no ballot. Summer is beautiful and full. Winter is cold, quiet and often magnificent.

Flush toilets, hot showers, drinking water, a general store and a visitor centre. Cabins, huts and safari tents as well as camp sites. No fires anywhere in the park at any time of year, so bring a gas stove.

There is no fuel in the park and phone signal is patchy to absent past the entrance. Fill up at Foster or Yanakie on the way in.

Best for

Families · First-timers · Couples

Skip if

Dogs, which are not permitted anywhere in the park, and anyone hoping to turn up in January without a booking.

BookingPeak summer and Easter at Tidal River are allocated by a ballot run by Parks Victoria months in advance, not first-come booking. Outside the peak period you book online like anywhere else.

A campground on a plateau at around 1300 metres beside a small alpine lake, granite tors, snow gums and a night sky that makes people stop talking.

You can swim in the lake in January, walk to the Horn for the view over the whole north-east, and be cold enough at 6am in February to want a beanie. The campground opens for the warmer part of the year — roughly from spring to autumn — and closes for the snow season. Check the opening dates before you plan; they move with the weather.

Flush toilets, hot showers and drinking water, which is generous for a national park at that altitude. No fires on the plateau — bring a gas stove.

Take clothing for ten degrees colder than Melbourne, whatever the forecast says. The plateau makes its own weather and it changes in an hour.

Best for

Families · Couples · First-timers

Skip if

Winter, when it is closed. And anyone who has packed only summer clothing.

BookingParks Victoria online, and the summer weeks book out well ahead.

A green grassy reserve in a limestone valley, with lyrebirds in the gullies, a spring-fed pool and two guided cave systems in the hill above the campground.

It is the softest introduction to remote-feeling Victoria there is: you are a long way east, but there is hot water and a kiosk. Caves are the same temperature year round, which makes this one of the few Victorian trips that works in a heatwave or a cold snap. The valley itself is best in spring and autumn.

Flush toilets, hot showers, drinking water, powered sites and cabins. Close to a full-service campground by Victorian standards.

Book the cave tour when you book the site. In holidays the tours sell out while you are still putting the tent up.

Best for

Families · First-timers · Couples

Skip if

Anyone chasing solitude in school holidays — it is the anchor of the whole district.

BookingCamp sites, cabins and safari-style tents are booked through Parks Victoria, and cave tours are booked separately on the day or ahead.

Open river flats on the Mitchell with deep green swimming holes, warm rock slabs and the Den of Nargun gorge walk downstream.

Popular with families who have been coming for decades and quiet enough midweek that you can have a bend of the river to yourself. A summer river camp above everything else. The river runs high and cold in winter and spring and the flats can flood.

Long-drop toilets and fire rings on open flats. No water, no showers, no bins.

The Den of Nargun is a significant place for the Gunaikurnai people. Walk it, read the signs, and stay out of the cave itself.

Best for

Families · Couples · Four-wheel-drive only

Worth knowingNo booking — first in. That makes January a lottery and a Wednesday in March a certainty.

A tarp strung between two trees turns a wet weekend from an ordeal into a slightly damp version of a good one.

With cover over the table you can cook, eat, play cards and let children be loud outside the tent instead of inside it. Practise putting it up once in the backyard, take more rope than you think, and pitch it before the tent if the sky looks like it means it. Everything else about wet-weather camping is downstream of having somewhere dry to stand.

Local tipAngle it so the water runs off one corner and away from the door, not into the middle where it pools and then dumps.

The difference between a bad weather day and a ruined trip is usually whether there is a bakery, a pool or a pub within a short drive.

Halls Gap for the Grampians, Forrest for the inland Otways, Marysville and Alexandra for the Cathedral Range, Mansfield for the Howqua, Bright for Mount Buffalo. Camp somewhere with an escape valve and a wet Saturday becomes hot chips and a swim indoors rather than four people in a tent looking at each other.

Worth knowingHalls Gap has a pool. Buchan Caves has caves that are the same temperature regardless of the weather, which is the most reliable wet-day plan in the state.

Children mind rain far less than adults do, as long as somebody has decided in advance that getting wet is the plan rather than the failure.

Gumboots, a spare set of everything, and a walk that was always going to be muddy. Waterfalls are better in the rain and every wet forest in Victoria has one within twenty minutes. Save the glow worms at Stevensons Falls or the rock pools at Blanket Bay for the evening. Then dry clothes, a card game under the tarp, and an early dinner.

Local tipPack twice the socks you think anyone needs, and one complete dry outfit each in a sealed bag that does not get opened until it is needed.

There is no prize for staying, and a trip that ends a day early on a good note is one everybody agrees to repeat.

Two nights is the right length for a first family camp. If the forecast turns genuinely bad — sustained rain, a strong wind warning, a fire danger rating that closes the park — pack up and drive home. Victorian parks do close on days of extreme fire danger, and that decision is made for you.

SkipDo not push through a severe wind warning in a coastal campground. The trees at Aire River and Johanna drop limbs.

For a first family trip, flush toilets and drinking water matter more than the view, and only a handful of Victorian park campgrounds have both.

Lake Eildon at Fraser, Buchan Caves, Lake Catani on Mount Buffalo and Tidal River at the Prom are the reliable ones, and the peninsula foreshore camps have full amenities and powered sites. Everywhere else, assume a long-drop toilet, no water and no bins. That is entirely manageable — it is just worth knowing before you arrive with a toddler.

BookingAll of those book out for summer and school holidays a long way ahead. The Prom allocates its peak weeks by ballot rather than booking.

Arrive with daylight to spare, hand out food immediately, and put the tent up second.

The worst forty minutes of any family camping trip is the gap between arriving and having somewhere to sit, and hungry children make it considerably worse. Bring the first night’s dinner cooked or close to it — something that reheats in one pot. Give the kids a job that keeps them nearby: counting pegs, collecting kindling where fires are allowed, finding the flattest patch.

Local tipLeave Melbourne before lunch on the Friday if you can. The Eastern and the Monash on a Friday afternoon add an hour to every drive time on this page.

The gear that actually keeps children happy in a campground is not camping gear.

A bike or scooter turns a campground road into an afternoon. A bucket and a net turn a creek or a rock pool into a morning. A head torch each turns dusk into an event rather than the end of the day. Add a deck of cards and something to draw on and you have covered most of a weekend without planning a single activity.

Worth knowingCampgrounds with loop roads and no through traffic — Fraser, Tidal River, Borough Huts — are the ones where bikes earn their space in the car.

Dogs are not permitted in Victorian national parks, and that includes Wilsons Promontory, the Grampians, the Otways and Mount Buffalo.

If the dog is coming, the trip is a state forest or a state park: Lerderderg at O’Briens Crossing, Starlings Gap in the Yarra State Forest, the Howqua river flats, the Murray river camps at Barmah and Gunbower, or the Wombat forest behind Blackwood. Leads, and take the waste out with everything else.

SkipDo not plan to leave a dog in the car at a national park campground. It is not permitted and in a Victorian summer it is dangerous.

Three things worth explaining to children once, calmly, on the first afternoon rather than in the moment.

Snakes are active through the warm months: stay on the tracks, wear shoes, do not put hands into hollow logs, and stand still and back away if you see one. Leeches turn up in the wet forests for days after rain and are harmless, which is worth saying before the first one appears. And the sun here is genuinely strong even on grey days — hats and sunscreen at breakfast, not at eleven.

Worth knowingTake a proper first aid kit with a compression bandage and know roughly where the nearest town is. Phone signal in most of these parks is patchy to absent.