EARLY ACCESS: Off-Grid Camping and Surfing at Crescent Head NSW

Crescent Head is one of eleven of NSW's National Surfing Reserves. Halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, iconic for its long right-hand point break and plenty of other surf beaches enarby. We spent a weekend off-grid camping and surfing it in our Sprinter van.

Crescent Head is a sleepy coastal village of about 1,500 people on the NSW Mid North Coast and it holds one of the best right-handers in the country - a wave good enough to be talked about in the same breath as Byron Bay. It got famous in the surf boom of the '70s and still hosts the Malibu Classic every year, which we turned up to the eve of completely by accident.

We're self-taught, adult-onset, firmly mediocre surfers. So this is not a highlight reel - it's four breaks in one weekend (Racecourse Beach, Barries Beach, Point Plomer and the Crescent Head point), two nights off-grid in the national park, one night at the Crescent Head Holiday Park and our honest verdict of the beaches and our surfing abilities.

📍Locations visited in video:
→ Crescent Head, NSW Mid North Coast
→ Racecourse Beach
→ Barries Beach
→ Point Plomer
→ Crescent Head Point (National Surfing Reserve)

💡Tips:
→ Point Plomer Road is unsealed and corrugated — fine in the dry in a 2WD van, slow going, and it gets rough after rain. Check conditions before you commit.
→ Book national park campsites ahead in school holidays and over the Malibu Classic weekend - the town fills up.
→ The point is a long, forgiving right-hander and one of the better waves in NSW to learn a longboard on. Respect the lineup, it gets crowded.
→ No fuel or full-size supermarket at Point Plomer. Stock up in Kempsey or Crescent Head before you head out.

🏄 Our quiver:
→ 8ft Mick Fanning soft-top longboard (second hand, Anglesea VIC)
→ 6'09 Slipstream midlength (Facebook Marketplace special)