How to get a campsite at Depot Beach when it's booked out

Depot Beach in Murramarang National Park books out months in advance for weekends and school holidays. If your dates are already gone, cancellations are your best option.

For a full breakdown of how NSW bookings work, see our state-by-state guide to Australian camping bookings.

How Depot Beach bookings work

All Depot Beach bookings go through NSW National Parks, which runs on a platform called RezExpert. Sites are released on a rolling basis. The Depot Beach booking page says bookings open at 7am, 180 days in advance, so each morning one more day becomes bookable.

There's no single release day and no ballot. New dates appear as the booking window advances. The first person to find an available date and complete payment gets it.

The campground has 40 sites: 31 unpowered and 9 powered. That's not many for a campground that draws from both Sydney, about three and a half hours south, and Canberra, about two hours east.

Bookings can be made online or by phone (1300 072 757). You'll also need to pay a park entry fee of $8 per vehicle per day on top of the campsite fee.

How much does a campsite at Depot Beach cost?

A standard unpowered campsite at Depot Beach costs $34 a night for two adults, and a powered or large site costs $43 a night. Those are the rates the NSW National Parks booking system quoted on 23 September 2026. Each extra adult adds $17 a night on an unpowered site and $21.50 on a powered or large site. A 2.5% booking fee goes on top of the total, and the $8 per vehicle per day park entry fee is paid separately.

Campsite rates were the same for a Wednesday in October and a Saturday in the summer holidays. Cabins cost more in summer. As a worked example, four adults on a standard unpowered site for three nights in January come to $204 plus a $5.10 booking fee, before park entry.

The NSW summer school holidays run from Friday 18 December 2026 to Wednesday 27 January 2027 (Eastern division). From 11 December 2026 to 26 January 2027, every Depot Beach campsite has a 3-night minimum stay. When I checked the booking system on 23 September 2026, every campsite type was already booked out for every night from 24 December 2026 to 23 January 2027. For those dates, a cancellation is the only way in.

Why it books out so fast

Depot Beach sits on the NSW South Coast in Murramarang National Park. The beach is a two-minute walk through coastal forest. Kangaroos graze on the grass around camp, and dolphins are regulars off the beach. The campground has hot showers, flush toilets, and shared covered shelters with gas barbecues and a pizza oven. Tank water needs treating before you drink it, and mobile reception is limited, which is either the best or worst part depending on who you ask.

With 40 sites serving both the Sydney and Canberra markets, weekends book out months ahead. School holidays are worse. Easter and the September-October break fill first.

The rolling booking window means there's no single day where everyone competes at once. But it also means the most organised campers snap up dates the moment they appear. If you're not checking regularly, the good weekends are gone before you see them.

For tips on finding last-minute sites during busy periods, see our school holiday campsite guide.

The Basin at Ku-ring-gai has the same problem: year-round weekend demand overwhelming a limited number of sites.

When cancellations happen

NSW National Parks' current refund policy creates a predictable cancellation pattern:

• 31+ days before arrival: 75% refund
• 0-30 days before arrival: 50% refund

A 2.5% booking fee is non-refundable in both cases. If NSW Parks closes the campground (fire, flood, etc.), you get a full refund.

A shake-up is proposed but not yet live. NSW has proposed scrapping the booking fee, moving refunds to 80% down to 3 days before arrival, and replacing per-person charges with per-site pricing. As of September 2026 none of that is in force and no start date has been announced, so the rules above are the ones that bind your booking.

Under the current policy, the 31-day mark is where most cancellations happen. People who booked speculatively start locking in their plans around a month out. If they're not going, they cancel while they can still get 75% back. After 30 days, the refund drops to 50%, so there's a second, smaller wave of cancellations from people who decide the 50% hit is worth it to free up their weekend. If the proposed rules land, expect that pattern to compress sharply toward the 3-day mark.

NSW Parks has no waitlist. When someone cancels, the site reappears on the booking portal for whoever happens to be checking. No notification. A cancelled site might sit available for a few hours before another camper grabs it. If you're checking once a day, you'll miss most of them.

How Schnerp monitors Depot Beach cancellations

Schnerp monitors NSW National Parks bookings for Depot Beach. You tell us your preferred dates, and we check for openings every few minutes. When a campsite becomes available, you get an alert so you can book it before someone else does.

You can set up a Depot Beach availability request in under a minute.

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