How to plan & book your Ningaloo Coast trip | We wish we’d known this!

When we left home the Ningaloo Coast was at the top of our bucket list. We’ve done it before - 10 years ago - when you didn’t need to book anything. But the world has changed and so have the Parks WA system.
This was really overwhelming. knowing you can’t book until 180 days in advance was both terrifying and paralysing - I just had no idea how to navigate it and bring multiple campsites, durations and dates together in an area so big and remote.
I reached out to some other travelers who have done the Ningaloo Coast for advice - was I missing something, was there a trick? Should we just wing it. They were all pretty consistent in their response that they wouldn’t wing it next time round and it’s just plain difficult and painful.
So, that meant on a windy, rainy day camped up I decided to tackle it head on, and I did it all in a day.
I felt such a relief and weight off my shoulders once I’d got these two months booked in. The rest we will wing and I know we’ll learn and discover so much more between now and then.
I’ve broken it into 3 stages -
Research: can be done at any time in advance of the plannng stage - for us, we’ve had years of preparing and researching, watching RUclips, scrolling Instagram posts and making notes - that’s what the research stage is all about.
Planning: best done before you start booking but good to do at the same time as booking so that your plan is fresh in your mind
Booking: this can be likened to a game of Tetris and can’t start more than 180 days from your anticipated arrival date.
Stage 1: Research
1. Keep lists of the places you are interested in visiting - I use both ‪@Campedia‬ and ‪@WikiCamps‬ #travel #fulltimetravel #offgrid #caravanlife #adventure #caravan #beach #camping for this. They both have different advantages.
3. Work out a rough plan of what places, what order and when you want to start or finish - I find Wiki is best for this as you can see the distances between your campsites
Stage 2: Planning
1. Go back over Campedia & Wikicamp reviews and note down any sites you do or don’t want to get
2. Watch RUclips videos of these camps and again add to your notes
3. Need to also consider how long you can be off grid and where you will get water, Fuel & supplies from. We know we can do 12 days on our water tanks easily and so with access to bore water showers and taking in a few extra containers of drinking water on the homesteads we can easily do 3-4 weeks before we need to head back into town.
4. Pick your most important place and work out what other sites you’d like to stay at . I like use Wikicamps for this part - I use the trip planner to get an idea of travel distances. For example your first choice might not be available but your second or third choice might be only a few kilometres away and have availability.
Stage 3: Booking
1. Start searching for dates around your rough plan. For us being at South Lefroy or Winderabandi for two weeks was the keystone booking and We wanted to be there in peak season - so towards the mid - end of July or early August.
2. Once you get your first booking that in place start working either forwards or backwards to find other available campsites
3. Aside from the beach camps, also look at the station stays that are not operated by Parks. Eg Warroora Station had the dates I wanted to fill a gap, Gnaraloo is only booked by email enquiry
4. Make your caravan park bookings that you might want for before and after your off grid stints to do full top ups, laundry etc
5. Once you have your bookings you can keep looking to see if a better site becomes available as other people cancel. I hope to replace most of my Warroora Station homestead stay with beach camps between now and July so I’ll keep checking availability every few days. You can change dates or site numbers of Parks sites easily and if you cancel a booking you get a full refund. The homesteads have pretty good cancellation policies too
6. Note that 180 days is not 6 months - if you only try for six months ahead you won’t find anything as that’s more like 182 or 183 days. I used a date calculator to help me work out my 180 day windows.
In summary, You need to be prepared to make it a project and take a few days to plot and book your travels. But it’s doable and note overwhelming once you make a start.
#oursaltylife #zonerv #ram1500 #ningaloo #waparks #warroora #gnaraloo #southlefroy #exmouth #tripplanner
#travel #fulltimetravel #offgrid #caravanlife #adventure #caravan #beach #camping