Glamping — glamorous camping — has genuinely transformed the way Australians and international visitors experience the country’s extraordinary wilderness. The concept takes everything that’s brilliant about being outside in Australia (the landscapes, the stars, the wildlife, the silence) and removes everything that’s unpleasant (wet sleeping bags, rocky ground, cooking over a single burner at 6am). What you’re left with are some of the most special and intimate travel experiences the country has to offer.
Australia is perfectly suited to glamping. The climate is good for outdoor accommodation for much of the year, the landscapes are diverse and extraordinary, and the glamping industry here has invested seriously in quality — the best properties rival any luxury hotel for comfort while delivering a connection to nature that a city hotel simply cannot replicate. Here are the best glamping experiences in Australia, from desert domes at Uluru to tented retreats in the rainforest.
📋 TL;DR — the quick version
- 🌌 Best outback glamping: Longitude 131° at Uluru — tents face directly towards the rock, the food is outstanding, and the night sky is overwhelming.
- 🌿 Best rainforest glamping: Nightfall Wilderness Camp in the Gold Coast Hinterland is completely off-grid and deeply special.
- 🌊 Best coastal glamping: Paperbark Camp in Jervis Bay has private tree-top tents with outdoor baths and extraordinary birdlife.
- 🏔️ Best mountain glamping: Cradle Mountain Lodge in Tasmania blends luxury accommodation with access to one of Australia’s finest walking areas.
- 🐨 Best wildlife glamping: Wilpena Pound Resort in the Flinders Ranges has permanent tents surrounded by endemic Flinders wildlife.
- 💡 Budget tip: Several excellent glamping properties in the Byron Bay hinterland and the Yarra Valley offer great quality for under AUD $300 per night.
- 🎯 Book well ahead: The best glamping properties in Australia — particularly those with limited tents — sell out months in advance for peak season dates.
🌌 Outback and desert glamping
The Australian outback at night is one of the great natural spectacles of the world. With no light pollution across millions of square kilometres, the Milky Way blazes overhead in a way that city-dwellers simply cannot imagine until they’ve seen it. These properties put you in the heart of it.
🪨 Longitude 131°, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
Longitude 131° is the benchmark against which all other Australian glamping is measured. The 16 canvas pavilions — “tents” feels like the wrong word for something this architecturally considered — are positioned on a sand dune overlooking Uluru, and the views from the private deck are extraordinary. Wake up at 5am and watch the rock turn from dark grey to pink to deep orange as the sun rises behind you. The guide programme is exceptional, led by experts in both the ecology and the Anangu cultural history of the region. Evenings often feature the famous Table 131° dinner — a degustation meal served on a platform in the desert, surrounded by nothing but sand and stars. It’s genuinely one of the most special experiences in Australia.
🌵 Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia
Sal Salis is a canvas-tented wilderness camp tucked into the sand dunes of Cape Range National Park, directly behind the Ningaloo Reef. The camp has just 16 tents, each with its own private deck, outdoor shower, and views across the Indian Ocean. The snorkelling directly off the beach is exceptional — you can walk off the sand and be swimming in pristine coral in under a minute. Between March and July, this is also whale shark country, and day trips from the camp to snorkel with whale sharks are one of the most exhilarating wildlife experiences in Australia. The camp is completely off-grid (solar powered, wastewater treated on-site), and the food — fresh seafood, local produce — is excellent.
🏜️ Wilpena Pound Resort, Flinders Ranges (SA)
Wilpena Pound is an extraordinary natural amphitheatre in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia — a series of quartzite peaks encircling a vast sunken plain. The resort here offers permanent tents (on platforms, with proper beds and private bathrooms) as well as rooms and villas, set in a landscape that’s unlike anywhere else in Australia. Wedge-tailed eagles soar overhead during the day, euros (a type of large wallaby) graze near the tents at dusk, and the yellow-footed rock wallaby — one of Australia’s most beautiful animals — can be seen on the cliff faces around the pound. The night skies here are extraordinary, and the resort offers guided star-gazing experiences with telescopes.
🌿 Rainforest and hinterland glamping
Australia’s subtropical and tropical rainforests provide some of the most atmospheric glamping settings in the world. The sounds, the moisture, the extraordinary biodiversity — spending a night in the rainforest is a genuinely different experience from any other landscape.
🌲 Nightfall Wilderness Camp, Lamington Plateau
Nightfall sits on 200 acres of private rainforest in the Gold Coast Hinterland, about 90 minutes from Brisbane. The elevated tented cabins are built on timber platforms in the canopy of ancient subtropical rainforest, each with a private outdoor bathtub (perfect for soaking under the stars), a wood-fired stove for cooler months, and the kind of profound forest silence that you simply cannot find closer to a city. The property is entirely off-grid — no mains power, no mobile signal — which forces a kind of digital detox that most guests report as an unexpected highlight. Swimming in the natural creek, walking through ancient fig trees, and listening to the forest wake up at dawn are the main activities here, and they’re enough.
🎋 Baillie Lodges properties (general)
The Baillie Lodges portfolio — which includes Longitude 131°, Capella Lodge on Lord Howe Island, and the soon-to-reopen Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island — represents the gold standard of Australian luxury lodge accommodation. All properties share the same philosophy: architecture that celebrates rather than competes with its landscape, expert guiding, outstanding food sourced as locally as possible, and service that feels genuinely personal rather than scripted. If you’re looking for the very best of Australian glamping, Baillie Lodges is where you start.
🌺 Daintree EcoLodge and Spa
Daintree EcoLodge sits on a five-acre property inside the Daintree World Heritage rainforest, with 15 elevated villas in the rainforest canopy. The villas have private decks with views into the forest, large outdoor soaking tubs, and the sounds of the rainforest all around them. The eco-lodge runs a programme of Indigenous cultural experiences led by Kuku Yalanji guides, including guided walks to identify medicinal plants, traditional food demonstrations, and cultural storytelling. The spa uses native rainforest botanicals in its treatments, and the restaurant sources ingredients from the surrounding ecosystem wherever possible. This is eco-tourism done properly.
👉 Book a Daintree Rainforest experience from Cairns on GetYourGuide →
🌊 Coastal glamping
Australia’s coast is extraordinary, and several glamping properties place you directly in the middle of it — sleeping to the sound of waves, waking to coastal views, and spending days swimming, snorkelling, and exploring beaches that most visitors never see.
🦅 Paperbark Camp, Jervis Bay (NSW)
Paperbark Camp is one of Australia’s most loved glamping properties — a small camp of 12 canvas tent-houses built on timber platforms among the paperbark trees (melaleuca) of the Jervis Bay hinterland. The tents are beautiful: proper beds with quality linen, outdoor baths under the stars, and decks where you can watch kingfishers and honeyeaters through your morning coffee. Jervis Bay itself has some of the whitest sand beaches in the world and excellent snorkelling and dolphin watching. The camp’s Gunyah Restaurant is one of the best in regional New South Wales, with a seasonal menu focused on local produce and a wine list that showcases the best of the nearby Shoalhaven wine region.
Pair this with Best Glamping Sites Australia, Eco Lodges Daintree Rainforest and Kata Tjuta Valley of the Winds to round out your trip.
🌊 Eco Beach Resort, Broome (WA)
Eco Beach sits on the Kimberley coast south of Broome, directly above the Indian Ocean on a clifftop that’s one of the most dramatic coastal settings in Western Australia. The property offers a mix of eco villas and permanent tents (called “retreats”), all facing the ocean, all solar powered and rainwater-fed. Broome’s famous Cable Beach — 22km of pristine caramel sand backed by red pindan cliffs — is a short drive away, and the property sits on the route of the great humpback whale migration that passes each winter. Watching the whales from the clifftop as the sun sets is one of those experiences that makes you genuinely grateful to be alive.
🏔️ Mountain and alpine glamping
Australia’s mountain regions offer a completely different glamping experience — cool air, autumn colours, dramatic ranges, and the kind of landscape that rewards walking and exploration. The best mountain glamping properties here have wood fires, wool blankets, and views that will stay with you for years.
🌿 Spicers Peak Lodge, Main Range National Park (QLD)
Spicers Peak sits at 1,100 metres elevation in Queensland’s Main Range National Park, about two hours south of Brisbane. The lodge offers a collection of elevated treehouses and villas built among the eucalyptus forest on the Great Dividing Range, with views across the ranges that on clear days stretch all the way to the coast. The air here is noticeably fresher than Brisbane, the wildlife is wonderful (including powerful owls, crimson rosellas, and lace monitors), and the restaurant — one of the best in regional Queensland — serves a degustation menu that showcases the produce of the Scenic Rim and Darling Downs. It’s an outstanding retreat that feels remarkably remote despite being a comfortable drive from Brisbane.
🍂 Southern Highlands glamping, NSW
The Southern Highlands southwest of Sydney has developed a strong glamping scene in recent years, drawing on the region’s cool climate, excellent produce, and beautiful pastoral landscapes. Several properties in the area around Bowral and Moss Vale offer high-quality tented accommodation amid autumn-coloured gardens, with log fires, sheep wandering past, and easy access to the area’s outstanding restaurants and cellar doors. It’s particularly lovely from April to June when the autumn colours are at their peak — the European trees planted by early colonial settlers create landscapes of gold and crimson that feel almost implausible in Australia.
🏖️ Byron Bay and northern NSW glamping
The Byron Bay hinterland has become one of Australia’s most exciting glamping destinations, with dozens of properties ranging from simple bell tents in paddocks to architect-designed retreats in the rolling hills behind the coast. The combination of a beautiful natural setting, excellent food and produce, and Byron’s vibrant cultural scene makes this one of the best glamping regions in Australia for accessibility and variety.
Properties like Ecos Living in Bangalow, The Byron at Byron’s surrounding rainforest villas, and several smaller family-run properties in the hills around Mullumbimby and Federal offer excellent options at a range of price points. Many are within 30 minutes of Byron Bay’s beaches while still delivering genuine peace and quiet. The hinterland markets (particularly the Bangalow Market on the fourth Sunday of each month and the Mullumbimby Farmer’s Market on Fridays) are excellent additions to any glamping stay in the region.
👉 Book Queensland hinterland experiences on GetYourGuide →
💡 Tips for booking glamping in Australia
- 📅 Book 3–6 months ahead: Premium properties like Longitude 131°, Sal Salis, and Paperbark Camp routinely sell out for peak season (school holidays, Christmas/New Year, Easter) this far in advance.
- 🌡️ Check the season: The best time to glamping varies by region. The Outback and Kimberley are best in May–September (winter in the tropics); the east coast properties are excellent year-round; Tasmania’s peak glamping season is December–March.
- 💰 Value tip: Midweek stays at many glamping properties are 20–30% cheaper than weekend rates, and the properties are usually quieter and more peaceful.
- 🐛 Pack insect repellent: Most glamping properties have some level of insect activity — particularly in the warmer months and in rainforest or coastal settings. A good repellent makes the experience considerably more comfortable.
- 📵 Embrace the disconnect: Many of the best glamping properties in Australia have limited or no mobile coverage. This is part of the appeal — let yourself enjoy it rather than worrying about it.
Australia’s glamping scene has matured into something genuinely world class. Whether you’re after a romantic outback getaway under a sky full of stars, a family adventure in the rainforest, or a coastal retreat where the waves lull you to sleep, the options here are extraordinary. The hardest part is choosing where to start.
