We idly began to develop a system of star ratings for roadside stops on our long trip to Limmen NP in August last year. (It was something to do when there wasn’t enough traffic to sustain numberplate scrabble.) Our recent trip to Blackdown Tableland NP, near Emerald, offered plenty of time to refine it.
The ratings
* It’s off the road, and that’s all. Just a safe place to pull over, often a simple one-lane widening of the bitumen for a hundred metres.
** It’s just off the road, and it has shade and perhaps a picnic table.
*** It is well separated from the road and has shade and a picnic table.
**** It is well separated from the road, and has shade, a picnic table and toilets, and perhaps water.
***** It is well screened from the road and has all the above.
Free camping
A four or five-star roadside stop is de facto a free camping site and will inevitably be used as such. Sufficient use will lead to its status being recognised by (e.g.) the Free Camping community or the local council; or it will be shut down.
Rifle Creek (scroll down for a photo) near Mt Molloy is a legitimate, or legitimised, free camping spot right on the highway. Corella Dam, between Julia Creek and Mt Isa, is an outstanding free camping area but it’s too far from the road to qualify as a roadside stop.
Here we are just off the road, in a beautiful shady spot with no facilities at all. It’s an approved camping site (on Running River – scroll down for another photo) but we used it as a lunch stop. Three stars? Four? Or just enjoy it?
Just enjoy it, I think, and go back some time with a tent.