Camping With Kids: The Gear That Actually Earns Its Space in the Van
There's a moment on the second trip of every season where you open the boot, look at the pile, and realise you've packed a portable high chair you have never once used.
Camping with kids has a gear problem, and it isn't that you don't have enough. It's that half of what you carry never comes out of the tub, while the five things you actually rely on cost about eighty dollars all up.
This is the honest version. What earns its space, what doesn't, and why.
The rule we use
Before anything goes in the van, it has to pass one of two tests:
- It gets used every single day, or
- It removes a recurring argument.
That's it. "It might be handy" is how you end up with a portable high chair.
Sun-safe clothing they'll actually keep on
Top of the list, because it does both jobs at once.
The sunscreen battle is relentless — you apply it, they get wet, you reapply, they run off, you find them at 2pm looking pink. Doing that four times a day for a fortnight is one of the genuinely draining parts of camping with little kids.
Our UPF50+ fishing shirts exist because of exactly that. The protection doesn't wash off, it doesn't need reapplying, and it's still working at 4pm. The Kids Ocean Fishing Shirt Dress is our best seller for a reason — it goes over togs, it's fine wet, and it's what half the kids at our community camps turn up in.
Bonus: they're quick-dry, so a swim at 11am doesn't mean a damp shirt in the van at 3pm. Browse the full kids range if you're sizing up for a trip.
A warm layer that goes over everything
Australian campsites get cold at night in every season. Inland in summer you can have a 36-degree day and a 9-degree night, and kids feel it far more than adults do.
One properly warm, oversized layer beats three thin ones. The Kids Camp Moodie goes straight over damp togs, over pyjamas, over whatever they're already wearing — which matters enormously when you're trying to get a tired kid warm without a full outfit change in the dark.
Fast-drying towels
A standard beach towel with three kids is a nightmare. They come back sandy, they stay damp, they take a full day on the line and they make the whole van smell.
Our sand-free towels shake off the sand, pack down to about a third of the size, and dry in a couple of hours. With a family, that alone frees up a locker.
Somewhere to dry all of it
This is the one families consistently under-plan for, and it's the one that quietly wrecks trips.
Kids generate wet things at an incredible rate — togs, towels, the shirt that went in the creek, the jumper that met a marshmallow. If you don't have a fast, reliable way to dry them, everything ends up draped over chairs and in a damp pile by the door.
We use the Slide n' Dry Pegless Clothesline. Twelve clickable slides so you can set the length to your site, two heavy-duty bungee hooks, and you slide clothes into the slots instead of pegging them. No pegs to lose in the wind, and it holds 40kg so wet towels and jeans are fine.
The kids can use it themselves, which is the actual selling point. "Go hang your togs up" becomes a thing they can do without you. There's more on our whole system in the caravan laundry guide.
One tub of camp-only toys
Not the toys from home. A dedicated tub that lives in the van and gets restocked once a season.
Cards, chalk, a footy, a bucket and spade, colouring stuff, a torch each, a couple of cheap craft bits. Because they never come inside, they're novel every trip. It's the highest-return twenty dollars in the whole setup.
Our school holiday camping ideas post has a stack of low-effort things to do with that tub.
A map they can mark off
Half gear, half activity, and it works from about age four upward.
The Map of Australia Sticker goes on the back of the van, or the fridge, or a wall in the annexe. Every town and every National Park is on it, and the kids mark off where they've been with a Sharpie as you go.
It gives them a sense of scale that a phone map never will, it's a genuine reward at the end of a long leg, and it's the thing other kids at the park come over to look at. It's 40cm wide and UV-rated, so it lives outside without fading.
What doesn't earn its space
Said with love, because we've owned most of these:
- Portable high chairs. A camp chair and a lap works. A picnic rug works better.
- Full-size board games. The boxes are huge and one piece always goes missing. Cards do the same job in a pocket.
- More than two pairs of shoes each. Thongs and one closed pair. That's it.
- Kid-sized camp chairs. They outgrow them in a season and then sit in yours anyway.
- Five outfits per kid. Two or three, and wash more often. This is the single biggest space saving available to you.
- Novelty camp cooking gadgets. The toastie iron survives. Nothing else does.
The stuff nobody lists but everyone needs
- A head torch each. Including the kids. Different colours or you'll referee it all trip.
- A doormat. Keeps most of the campsite out of the beds.
- A lidded 20-litre bucket. Washing machine, toy tub, wet-togs bin, step stool.
- Wet bags. Two or three. For togs, for the shirt that met the creek, for the one that met something worse.
- A cheap pack of hair ties. You will lose all of them. Every trip.
Questions we get asked
What do you actually need for camping with kids in Australia?
Sun-safe clothing, a warm oversized layer for nights, fast-drying towels, a reliable way to dry wet things, a head torch each and a tub of camp-only toys. Almost everything else is optional or already in the van.
How many clothes should I pack per child for a camping trip?
Two to three outfits, regardless of trip length, plus sleepwear and one warm layer. Washing every second or third day takes twenty minutes and saves you an enormous amount of space and sorting.
How do you keep kids sun-safe while camping?
Cover them with UPF50+ clothing as the first line, then use sunscreen on the bits clothing doesn't cover. Clothing doesn't wash off, doesn't need reapplying and doesn't get negotiated at every stop, which makes it far more reliable in practice than sunscreen alone.
What's the best way to dry wet clothes when camping with kids?
A pegless clothesline strung in sun and wind. Kids can hang their own things on it, there are no pegs to lose, and a length you can adjust means it fits whatever space your site gives you.
How do you keep kids entertained at a campsite?
A tub of toys that only lives in the van, so it's new every trip, plus something ongoing like marking off a map of where you've been. Novelty and progress do more work than quantity.
Start with the two that fix your worst day
If your hardest part is sun and sunscreen, start with the clothing. If it's the wet, sandy chaos, start with the towels and the line.
You do not need everything before your next trip. You need the one thing that fixes the moment you dread.
And if nights are your issue — the 2am wake-ups, the kid who won't settle in a strange bed — Camping with Kids: What If They Scream All Night? is the most-read post we've ever published, because you are absolutely not alone in it.
Come and compare packing lists with 30,000 other camping mums in our Facebook community.
Written by Prue | Founder, Mums Who Caravan and Camp
Prue is a camping mum, community builder, and the founder of MWCAC — Australia's go-to brand for sun-safe UPF50+ clothing for families who love the outdoors. She has packed, unpacked and ruthlessly culled a family camping setup more times than she can count, and started MWCAC after years of fighting the sunscreen battle with her own kids at campsites. Today, MWCAC is trusted by over 30,000 Australian camping mums.
Victoria, Australia | mumswhocaravanandcamp.com.au | Facebook Community