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If you are travelling around Australia in a caravan, RV, or just on a road trip you will no doubt find yourself looking for free campsites, water points, dump points, and even toilets. These facilities are essential when on the road, and if you don’t know where to look it can seem like a daunting task.
Luckily, there is an app called WikiCamps that takes the guesswork out of it and provides the most comprehensive database available in Australia. We consider WikiCamps a must have application, and so do many others as it is the most popular camping app in Australia.
WikiCamps is a map of all the things you could need while driving around Australia; campgrounds, caravan parks, points of interest, information centers, water points (including taps, showers and toilets) as well as dump points. Not only does it provide you with the address for these locations but the comments and reviews by other users allows you to ensure that it will meet your needs when you get there.
The app offers a 14-day free trial followed by a one-time cost of $7.99 (AUD). This is absolutely worth it and is the best 8 dollars we have spent for our trips.
You can download WikiCamps from the following links:
Continue reading below as we take you through everything you need to know on how to find free campsites and more with WikiCamps.
Using WikiCamps to find free campsites and more in Australia
Understanding the main screen
The main screen of WikiCamps shows you a map of the area which you can zoom in and out of, along with all the sites available in the area. These sites are identified by a symbol showing what type they are. The site types that can be found on the map are:
Tip: When scrolling around the map you can tap this button 
to go back to your location
Each site type then offers site features to give you more information about what is available at each site. There is way too many for us to show them all, but you will get used to which symbols are important to you as you use the app. These generally give you an idea of cost, what amenities are available (Showers, Toilets, Drinking Water, Dump Point) if pets are allowed, what activities are available and what size/type of vehicle the site is suitable for.
Typically, the main things we look for here is free or donation, as we usually want to free camp. As well as phone service. As we work from the road being able to check a site for phone service a head of time is extremely helpful. There have only been a few times that we have arrived to a site that has claimed service but it hasn’t met our needs. If you want to know more about how to have better access to WiFi on the road check out our post here.
Site Information
To see if a site you are interested in is suitable and access all the information available, all you have to do is tap on the icon on the map.
This brings up a summary of information with a cover photo, name of the site, rating, distance, and a glimpse at some of the features.
You can then tap on that summary to take you into the main page of information for the site. This is where you will find a description, all the features as well as the address. This is how you will determine if a site looks right for you. Using the description and list of features to get an idea of its suitability.
User Reviews
One of the best features of WikiCamps is its approach to user feedback. Each site allows users to post a review and verify costs that you can get feedback from real people about the condition and quality of a site.
We always check the reviews and verify the costs of a site before going to get an idea of the site.
Using Filters
Another key feature of using WikiCamps and finding what you want is using the Filters option. This allows you to remove sites you don’t want to see from the map and focus on the ones you do.
Most of the time we will use this to find free campsites, so we will set the filter to ‘Free’. We also use it to narrow down on water fill points or dump points when searching for these.
To use filters first press the filter button
Then tap the radio button next to sites you don’t want or site features you are looking for:
You can show sites ‘with’ a particular feature or ‘hide’ sites that have that feature.
If you are looking for a particular site, you can also tap on the search button to type in a query to find what you are looking for. You can also search a list of sites by pressing on the ‘search-list’ button. This will allow you to see a full list of sites nearby.
Downloading the maps offline
WikiCamps also allows you to download the maps to your phone so that you can still access the information even when you do not have an internet connection.
To download maps:
First press on the maps layer icon
Then tap the ‘offline’ maps view
You will then be taken to a screen where you can download the world map (must be downloaded) then you can select ‘Australia (West)’ or ‘Australia (East)’
Alternatives
There are a few alternatives to WikiCamps that do a similar job but are note as comprehensive.
Two apps that are very similar are ‘CamperMate’ and ‘Camps Australia Wide’. They are available for Android and Apple and have a very similar interface, feature set and have the benefit of being free.
The general response is that they don’t include as many sites as WikiCamps does. However, if you would prefer a free option, they are still suitable.
Another option for those that prefer an old school method is the Camps Australia Wide books. Camps Australia Wide has been producing books for over 20 years to provide travelers with information on camping destinations across Australia. We have carried one of these books on our travels as a backup to WikiCamps, but found we never needed it.
For more tips when free camping read our post on Tips for Free Camping in Australia
Thanks for such a brilliant introduction and guide to WikiCamps.
It really is appreciated… we really do have the most incredible community!
Thanks again,
Team WikiCamps
(PS – The 14 day free trial is only available for Android through the Google Play Store)
It’s worth noting that since this article was written WikiCamps has gone through a series of “upgrades”. An app that I’ve been using for quite a few years and have in the past been extremely happy with has now become an absolute disaster. The app is now prone to locking up and many other problems, as reported by numerous previously happy users. Additionally, downloading offline content is pretty much no longer workable, as the connections very frequently time out and you’re left with only partial results only, if any, with no indication from the app that anything actually went wrong. To demonstrate this, you can sit a couple of devices beside each other and sync offline content on each. The results will be very different on each device. You can repeat this numerous times and never get the same results across devices. What’s more, the download speed is so pathetically slow that even leaving the download running overnight won’t help. So, an app I have been using and recommending for all these years is now a very buggy piece of crap that’s of little use, especially when working offline. It’s just unfortunate that there really is nothing else out there that is anywhere near being a true competitor, as every alternative only has a very small percentage of the sites, especially free sites, that WikiCamps has in its database.
Due to a few issues we haven’t really been travelling much lately so haven’t experienced the issues firsthand, but it is something we have seen talked about on a few groups we follow.
I did see a statement from WikiCamps that the issues were because of a change of their backend database, which is a pretty big change.
Hopefully the issues get resolved soon and it can go back to being a top app that is easy to recommend.