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We publish the trusted and comprehensive travel guidebooks Australian travellers have come to love, including the Camps guide book, Australia’s favourite low-cost camping and RV travel guide known as “The Traveller’s Bible” and our Caravan Park guide book, focusing on caravan parks across Australia. The Camps Team also manage the popular Camps Australia Wide App which continues to grow to support its online community.
We’re always planning our next adventure and want to help you create those travel memories too.
Heatley and Michelle Gilmore are the third owners of Camps Australia Wide. Based on Queensland’s Cooloola Coast, Heatley and Michelle travel every chance they get.
Since 2018, Heatley and Michelle Gilmore have continued the tradition of 20 years worth of travel and almost 30 years of research to provide Australia’s most comprehensive and easy to use camping, budget campsite and caravan park guides, that help you save money and travel further.
More so, Heatley and Michelle are leading the Australian travel industry with their innovative guide books and app – constantly improving site find-ability, site verification, utilising easy to understand symbols and embracing technology to help people really experience Australia!
Michelle and Heatley are passionate about affordable travel around our country, about respecting our land, and leaving a campsite cleaner than you found it. They know that caravan parks play a vital role for travellers too (especially if you only carry 140L for 2 adults and 4 kids!).
Michelle and Heatley love sharing campfire happy hours, chatting to fellow travellers and marvelling at our unique wildlife, scenery and way of life on the road.
Heatley and Michelle took their family around Australia with CAMPS 7 a few years back – six of them in a six berth motorhome, making treasured family memories. Today you’ll find them auditing sites, ticking off bucket list must dos and sharing their favourite travel places and tips in the free CAMPS newsletter, Facebook Group “I Love Camping Australia Wide’ and on other social media channels.
Look out for us in our Mountain Trail hybrid van towed by a dual cab ute, and hope to meet you on our travels!
Creator of Camps, Phil Procter starts eight years of full time travels and research, he says, "Our main sources then were various atlases, Smedley’s Bush Camps and Rest Areas Around, Through and Across Australia (a total of a few hundred sites in a black and white B5 publication) and other camping guides, which, although very comprehensive, weren’t that user friendly for travelling the highways."
Phil Procter said "After eight years of travels I had amassed quite a collection of site notes, diaries and scribbled-on atlases, enough to put forward the idea of compiling a comprehensive database that could be shared amongst us motorhomer’s." He asks for contributions – with half a dozen replies, one member gave him a list of over 1,000 sites and CAMPS AUSTRALIA WIDE is founded!
3000 copies of the first book arrived – in hardcover with 2300 listings and hand drawn maps – with many pre-sold, and Phil said then the phone started ringing!
Then throughout 2004, Phil travels 50,000km in nine months, in an 8 foot Ross A-Class motorhome, with car and trailer – taking photos and recording updates.
30,000 copies of Camps 3 with Hema Road Atlas and new symbols. Phil said, one forty foot container to HEMA Map’s and another forty foot container to our house. The books filled up our three bay garage, but within a few months the pile had gone down quite a bit.
New owners – Philip and Cathryn Fennell of what the first owner and creator of CAMPS describes as the most popular camping guide in Australia’s history and it has been the best selling publication for HEMA Map’s
Camps 4 first produced with another edition: Camps Snaps in a hardcover
Cathryn and Philip travel about 50,000km every year!
Camps 6 and Caravan Parks second edition released in June 2011. Philip and Cathryn have their share of red dust and mishaps!
Camps App 1.0 now available for iPhone and iPad!
The Camps 7 edition is the publication current owners Heatley and Michelle took with them when they took their family around Australia, with six of them their six berth motorhome, making treasured family memories. Their lap was 23,000 km into every mainland state and territory!
The Gilmores at Wangi Falls, Litchfield National Park. Now our kids are a whole lot older but still hanging out at waterfalls together!
Thousands of hours go into every book – here’s Cathryn working hard, updating sites.
Camps Australia Wide App 2.0 is on the market and Caravan Parks 4 is published – this new edition rocks a green cover!
Camps 9 is published with over 4000 site listings
New caravan for current owners the Gilmores. Even Roxy the dog likes it, although she’s not sure why it is only 4 berth! Kids are growing up, so now it is swags and two vehicles when we travel. Here we are playing board games while sitting out a storm at Charlie Moreland Reserve, QLD.
Philip and Cathryn Fennell journeyed for 12 years, with 2 off road caravans, 2 4WDs and driving over 900 000 km, in a dream job travelling this great country and actually calling it work, an ideal lifestyle!
New owners, Heatley and Michelle Gilmore continue on the tradition of travel and research to provide Australia’s most comprehensive and easy to use guides, to help you save money and travel further.
Our fantastic blog content is recognised and we are awarded the Top 10 Australian Camping Blog Award.
Direct orders grown so much we now have books packaged and fulfilled through in Sydney.
Camps Australia Wide App 3.0 released and continues to be updated with no monthly charge – just a flat $9.99 per year for access to all the latest updates – there’s new symbols, easier than ever navigation around the App
Caravan Parks 5 arrived after Christmas – with the first fold out cover with a map of Australia inside and the very latest Hema maps.
Camps 10 is released with over 950 new sites and for the first time is published in both the Standard format and a new Easy to Read format with Camps Snaps. Camps 10 includes the very latest Hema maps, a fold out soft cover and is now spiral bound! Two months after launch, CAMPS 10 proves to be even more popular than CAMPS 9 plus we had to reprint CARAVAN PARKS 5 months earlier than expected!
Premium POI released with Caravan Parks (to total 8088 locations) plus 3 updates – that’s twice as many locations with updates every 6 months! Brian and Kirsten from GPSOz are great partners for CAMPS!
App growth doubled February 2019 sales – people are loving the easy to use format.
Sales continue to flourish whilst people plan through COVID restrictions. Once Queensland allows travel, Heatley, Michelle and family complete an epic Outback QLD trip to Cloncurry via Carnarvon Gorge – and they updated their vehicle and signage!
Camps Australia Wide App 4.0 released with a new redesign, more symbols and new site type icons, making it easier to use and sites easier to identify.
A very dog friendly CAMPS 11 released. New colourful symbols mean you can easily identify each site type (showground, national park, pub stay etc) and pet friendly sites on the maps now have ears! CAMPS 11 listings also have loads of new site feature and amenities symbols incorporated from the CAMPS AUSTRALIA WIDE App such as fishing, swimming and 4WD access!
A first time ever - limited edition boxed set. New release 640 pages, split into 7 separate state guides each with large easy to read text and full colour site photos, limp bound, stitched and glued, flexible cover, B4 size, product of Australia all enclosed in a board slipcase.
Caravan Park 6 has some exciting new features. New pet friendly symbols, more facilities in the listings, address and GPS for easy navigation is now included.
Another adventure on the Natural Science Loop at south western Queensland and back from the Victorian Alps, just before the Queensland border shuts again! Pictured warming up at Charlotte Plains Station!
CAMPS Pendium has covered country this year. Waterfall hopping and hiking at Litchfield National Park in NT, Tassie, the Victorian High Country, ACT and Granite Belt in NSW. Plus a Murray River adventure in SA and SE Queensland. Read all about our adventures and camps in our weekly newsletters.
Need a question answered or help with an order or the app? Check out our Help Centre and FAQs here.
Or if you can’t find the answer to your query, get in touch with the Camps Team. Send us an email info@campsaustraliawide.com, call us on +61 (0)7 5474 2542 or send us a message via our contact form here.
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