The RV Daily Foodie Trails team stayed at all of these parks on our delicious adventures around NSW and Queensland, and we give them all our tick of approval

WORDS EMMA RYAN

1. Big 4 Mudgee Holiday Park, Mudgee, NSW

Located on the outskirts of town, Big 4 Mudgee Holiday Park is the ideal place to base yourself to explore one of NSW’s best wine regions. The park covers 15-acres and has shady powered sites, plus a range of cabins. With a pool, a giant jumping pillow and a kids club that runs in the NSW school holidays, it’s a family-friendly park, too. You can even bring your favourite family member, your dog.

Mudgee is located just four hours from Sydney, and is a wonderful place to take the van for a weekend. With loads of cellar doors all quite close to town, Mudgee is known for its bold reds and its excellent local dining options. Not into wine? Are you mad?! Just kidding. There’s a local craft brewery in town, too.

 Tel: 07 5471 6410   Email: sales@zonerv.com.au   Web: www.zonerv.com.au

2. Colour City Caravan Park, Orange, NSW
Although an absolutely gorgeous historic country town with beautiful old buildings and leafy streetscapes, Orange is not known for its range of caravan parks. It’s for that reason we can confidently say Colour City Caravan Park is the best place to set up your van in Orange, the namesake Colour City. And it’s a lovely albeit humble park, with lush grass, big trees and a nice outlook across the showgrounds. Indeed, the park is part of the showgrounds recreation area and is managed by the local council. It has a dump point, laundry and pets are allowed.

Best of all, the Colour City Caravan Park is an easy walk from multiple wonderful food outlets, including Bills Beans East Orange, which we’ve deemed to be the best coffee in Orange. And that’s saying something; Orange is well-known for its city-quality food and wine scene.

3. Country Style Caravan Park, Stanthorpe, Qld 
The Granite Belt is Queensland’s best wine region, located three hours southwest of Brisbane a hop, skip and a jump from the NSW border. And Country Style Caravan Park is the best place to set up your caravan when you’re exploring these parts with it in tow.

The park is neat and tidy, with drive-through powered sites plus a large, riverfront bush camping area with unmarked sites for peaceful self-sufficient camping on the banks of the Severn River. The amenities are excellent, and there’s a camp kitchen and laundry, too. The park is also pet-friendly but remember to bring their vaccination certificates.

Located on the outskirts of Stanthorpe, the Granite Belt’s main centre, Country Style Caravan Park is an excellent base to explore the more than 40 cellar doors and countless food outlets of the region, not to mention the staggering natural beauty of these upper reaches of the New England Tablelands. They don’t call it the Granite Belt for nothing!

1. Eden Beachfront Holiday Park, Eden, NSW
A fitting entry into the ‘3 We Long For’ hall of fame, Eden Beachfront Holiday Park is about as idyllic as caravan parks come. Situated in a peaceful valley on the outskirts of the historic port town of Eden, the park enjoys absolute beach frontage at the mouth of Shadrack Creek, which slowly trickles into the oceanic waters of Twofold Bay. It’s all framed by forest slopes, making Eden Beachfront Holiday Park both beachfront and surrounded by bushland.

Options for places to set up your caravan range from powered ensuite sites through to unpowered sites on lush grass set against the bush. There’s an excellent, modern camp kitchen with barbeques and bar tables. Kids will love the park’s very own beach just a few steps down off the grass, where the calm waters of the bay lap against pristine sand. There’s a boat ramp a two-minute drive away, plus car/boat washing facilities onsite.

2. Lake Redbrook Holiday Retreat, Childers, Qld
Located 10-minutes outside the sugarcane farming town of Childers, 45-minutes south of Bundaberg, Lake Redbrook Holiday Retreat is a park we long for thanks in large part to its unique natural surroundings, which lend an air of serious relaxation to one’s stay. This is a place where you’ll set up the van, unfold the camp chair and exhale a breath you didn’t even realise you were holding.

Set on 165-acres including a beautiful lake where waterbirds thrive, Lake Redbrook Holiday Retreat is set amongst sugarcane fields on a quiet country road far from the madding crowd. Drive-through powered sites make life easy, and the view across the lake from every part of the property is something to behold, particularly at sunrise and sunset. Guests can hire a kayak to explore the lake, or set off for a walk around the property where the owner keeps exotic farm animals, including Moluccan Rusa deer and peacocks.

Childers is an easy drive away for coffee, lunch and to stock up on beautiful fresh local produce from this agricultural food bowl.

3. 1770 Camping Ground, 1770, Qld 
If you can think of something better than setting up your caravan metres from the sand of a peaceful, waveless beach that looks out to the Southern Great Barrier Reef, we’d like to hear from you.

1770 Camping Ground is one of those places people return to year after year, and for very good reason. It enjoys absolute beach frontage in a secluded bay inside 1770’s Round Hill Headland. The campground’s white sandy beach and still blue waters are a safe place for kids to splash and play, and the ideal place to moor your boat in between daytrips out to the Reef.

Although marketed as a campground, we’re including it here as a caravan park, on account of the basic caravan facilities on offer including powered sites and amenities. The campground faces west, so the sunsets across the water are something to behold. You’ll feel like you’re a lot further north; the relaxed, quiet town of 1770 has an air of Far North Queensland about it that we found nothing short of captivating.