Choosing a free camp when you're travelling solo

Last dry season I pulled into a bore reserve west of Halls Creek about twenty minutes after last light, tired, hungry, and not thinking straight. The ground looked flat in the headlights. It wasn't. I woke up on a lean I didn't like, next to a claypan that had clearly been under water a few weeks earlier judging by the grass line on the fence posts. Nothing bad happened, but it was a lesson in exactly the kind of decision solo free camping punishes you for making badly: the ones you make when you're rushed and alone with no second set of eyes checking your logic.

I've been doing this full-time for a few years now in a Troopcarrier with a camper on the back, mostly across the top end and the Kimberley, mostly by myself. The rules around where you're legally allowed to free camp are one thing — and worth knowing cold, state by state. But legality is only half the job. The other half is a set of habits for actually choosing a good spot once you've found a legal one, and that part gets skipped in most of the advice I read before I started doing this properly.

Solo free camping changes the maths

With a second person in the vehicle you've got someone to bounce a decision off. Is that a good spot? Does that bloke's camp look right? Is the track in going to be a problem reversing back out in the dark? Alone, you're the only vote, and tiredness at the end of a long driving day makes for bad votes. I've made peace with a simple rule: I don't choose a camp when I'm making decisions I wouldn't trust from someone else in that state. If I'm too cooked to assess ground properly, I stop earlier than planned, even if it costs me twenty kilometres of progress.

The other change is that nobody's coming looking for you on any particular schedule. That sounds dramatic but it's just logistics. If your camp choice puts you somewhere with no cover, no phone signal and a soft edge, and something goes wrong, the timeline for anyone finding out is measured in days, not hours. That's the frame I use for every other decision in this list.

Get there with daylight to spare

My rule is I want to be parked and looking at the ground properly by 3.30 to 4pm at the latest, earlier in winter when the light drops fast. That gives me time to walk the site before committing, check for soft sand, old flood debris caught in fence lines or trees, ant nests, and anywhere a branch could come down in wind. It also means if the spot's no good I've still got daylight to find another one instead of gambling on a random pull-off in the dark.

This is the single biggest change I made to how I travel. Early in my first year I was still doing 400km-plus days and rolling into camps at dusk. Now I plan shorter days specifically so the arrival buffer exists. It's slower. It's also the reason I haven't had a genuinely bad night in three years of doing this solo.

Read the ground, not just the view

A flat, grassy clearing near a creek looks perfect and is often the worst choice on the map. Flood debris caught two metres up in the paperbarks tells you what that creek does in the wet, and plenty of dry-season creek beds and claypans catch runoff from storms a long way upstream, well outside any local rain you've seen. I check for a grass line or debris line before I camp anywhere near a watercourse, and I check the Bureau of Meteorology forecast and any river height data for the catchment, not just my own gut feeling about the sky.

Soft sand and black soil are the other traps. Black soil that's fine and dusty on top can turn to axle-deep glue after even light rain, and you won't get yourself unstuck alone without a decent recovery kit and a fair bit of patience. If the ground looks like it could turn to porridge, I either avoid it or I make sure I've got a clear, firm exit route already scouted before I unhook anything.

Solar, shade and the trade-off nobody mentions

Everyone talks about finding shade for comfort. Fewer people talk about what shade does to your solar recovery, and when you're alone with no one to jump-start a fridge off another vehicle, your power system is your problem and only your problem. I run the numbers most afternoons: if I'm parked under decent tree cover for two nights to escape the heat, my panels might only be pulling half their rated output, and that matters a lot more when there's no backup plan. If you haven't worked out your own daily draw versus what your panels can actually deliver in real shade conditions, it's worth doing that sum properly rather than guessing — I've written more on sizing a solar and battery system that actually works for the full maths.

My workaround is usually a compromise camp: nose the rig so panels get a few hours of clear morning sun even if the rest of the site is shaded through the heat of the day. It's not elegant but it keeps the fridge running without a generator, which matters more to me at a quiet bush camp than most gear reviews let on.

Signal, exit routes, and telling someone your plan

I carry a satellite messenger and I use it every single night, even on a good camp fifty metres off a sealed road. It costs nothing to send a check-in and it means if I don't send one, someone knows roughly where to start looking. That's not paranoia, it's just the actual practical answer to travelling alone a long way from the nearest town. Triple Zero and the Emergency+ app are still worth having loaded before you lose signal, because Emergency+ can give your GPS coordinates to a call taker even without full mobile coverage, which matters more than most people realise until they need it.

Before I pick a final spot I also check I can turn the rig around or reverse out without a three-point shuffle in the dark if I need to leave quickly, whether that's weather, a dodgy neighbour, or the ground turning bad overnight. A camp I can't easily exit isn't a camp I'll use, no matter how good the view is.

Reading the room at a shared free camp

Most free camps aren't empty, and most of the etiquette questions solo travellers ask me are really about other people, not the ground. I give a wide berth to established camps, at least 50 to 100 metres where the site allows it, and I take a slow lap before deciding where to pull in, partly for ground conditions and partly just to get a read on who's there. If a spot feels off, I don't overthink it, I keep driving. Trusting that instinct has never once cost me a good night's sleep I'd have otherwise had.

Generators, dogs and headlights are the three things that cause the most friction at shared bush camps, and being solo doesn't exempt you from any of it. I run my fridge on battery overnight rather than a generator specifically so I'm not that person at 6am. Apps like the ones covered in our roundup of caravanning apps are handy for checking recent reviews of a site before you arrive, including whether previous campers flagged noise, rubbish or access issues.

Station stays and private land: a different set of rules

Not every non-caravan-park option is a free camp in the legal sense, and I'd argue the distinction gets blurred too often in Facebook groups. Station stays like Bullara Station Stay in WA are paid, permitted camping on private pastoral land, with actual facilities and a landowner relationship to respect, not a free-for-all. I like them precisely because the etiquette is clearer: you're a guest on someone's working property, the boundaries are marked, and there's usually someone to ask if you're unsure about track conditions or where not to go. On the Dampier Peninsula run out along Cape Leveque Road, several of the community-run camps operate on a similar permit basis, and turning up expecting free-camp rules there is a fast way to annoy people who actually live in the country you're passing through.

The checklist I actually run through

By the time I'm deciding to stay somewhere, I've usually covered five things without consciously ticking boxes: is the ground firm and clear of flood debris, do I have shade-versus-solar sorted for tomorrow, have I got a satellite check-in sent, could I reverse out in the dark if I had to, and does the spot feel right once I've had a look at who else is there. None of that is complicated. It's just the difference between a decision made at 3.30pm with daylight and options, and one made at 6.15pm with none of either.

If you're stitching a run together where this all matters daily, the stretch through the Kimberley on the Gibb River Road or further along the Savannah Way is a good place to practise these habits, because the country genuinely punishes a rushed decision more than most of the east coast ever will. Get the timing right and free camping out here is still, in my view, the best reason to own a rig capable of it.