Looking out over the Five Rocks Headland & Beach

Recently my family and I did a drive up to the Byfield National Park area, which is located around Five Rocks, Stockyard Point, and Nine Mile Beach. Access is 4WD only, so we took along our new Nissan Patrol. This was the first time we’d ever done sand driving, or proper four wheel driving for that matter, so it was exciting to be testing out the 4WD.

Byfield National Park covers an area of around 15,000 hectares or 37,000 acres, so it’s a huge, fairly unspoilt area. Notable features include the huge sand dunes in the Nine Mile Beach area. For more information about camping spots and facilities in the area, please visit this page on the EPA’s website.

Most people visit the Five Rocks area to four wheel drive, fish, camp or explore. Some do a combination of all these things. One good piece of advice for anyone wishing to go and visit this area is to bring someone in separate vehicle along, as there are plenty of potential for getting bogged in soft sand and the like. Anyway, below are some photos of our day trip up there:

Our convoy on the road to Five Rocks, as you can see the whole track there is sand.

Driving down the hill to the Stockyard Point Lookout. From here you can look north to the Five Rocks Headland or south over Nine Miles Beach.

Our parked cars at the Stockyard Point lookout.

The view to the Five Rocks Headland from Stockyard Point.

Looking down to the start of Nine Mile Beach, jutting up to Stockyard Point.

I took this picture from the top of a small hill, overlooking the end of Nine Mile Beach. It was a beautiful place for swimming.

The Orange Bowl. This gigantic pile of orange sand is a great place to rev it up and spin some wheels, but rangers are handing out spot fines for anyone driving in the bowl itself.