Sandy Cape Jurien Bay camping: booking and release dates

Sandy Cape Recreation Park is the Shire of Dandaragan's beach campground, 10 to 12 km north of Jurien Bay in Western Australia. You book it online through the Shire's page on SpacetoCo, and you need a booking to camp anywhere in the park. There are three areas to book: the Main Campground's numbered sites, and the North Bush and South Bush 4x4 camping areas. Sites are listed at $25 a night, and you can stay up to nine nights.

Sandy Cape doesn't use a rolling booking window. The Shire opens each season in one release, at 9am AWST on the first of a month. The 2026-27 summer, 1 November to 28 February, opened on Thursday 1 October 2026. The next release is at 9am AWST on Monday 1 February 2027, for 1 March to 31 May 2027, including Easter and the April school holidays. This guide covers how booking works, what was still free after the summer release, and how to catch a cancellation.

Looking for Sandy Cape on K'gari (Fraser Island) in Queensland instead? That's a different place, and our K'gari camping permits guide covers it.

How do you book Sandy Cape?

You book Sandy Cape on the Shire of Dandaragan's SpacetoCo page. You need a free SpacetoCo account, and you must be 18 or over. Bookings have been required everywhere in the park since 11 December 2024. The Shire's terms set a $300 infringement per person for camping without one.

A booking is for one campsite. You pay the full fee when you book and give the registration of every vehicle and trailer. If you don't know a registration yet, the terms let you enter "UNKNOWN" and update it before you arrive. Friends with their own vehicles need their own site if yours doesn't have room for them.

The longest stay is nine consecutive nights in any 30-day period. Check-in is from 11am and check-out is by 10am.

In the Main Campground you choose a numbered site, and SpacetoCo holds it for 15 minutes once it's in your cart. When Schnerp checked on 26 September 2026, the cart said "Holding your spot for 15 mins". The site disappeared from other people's searches within seconds. The Shire's notice for the February 2026 release called sites "first-in, best-dressed". If someone else secures your site during checkout, the system returns you to the main booking page.

Main Campground, North Bush and South Bush compared

Sandy Cape Recreation Park has three bookable areas on SpacetoCo. All three are listed from $25 a night and take stays of up to nine nights. These are the SpacetoCo listings as of October 2026.

The Shire describes the Main Campground as 112 unpowered sites, and SpacetoCo lists 108 of them as bookable. Each site's listing gives its size and how many vehicles it takes. In the North Bush and South Bush areas, each vehicle place covers a vehicle and a towed trailer, or two vehicles with no trailer.

Children aged five and under are free and don't count towards a site's limit. The Shire's booking setup describes the site fee at most Main Campground sites as covering two guests aged six and over, with $5 per extra person per night. The listings don't show that charge, so if there are more than two of you, I'd budget for it.

Dogs are allowed on a lead, and generators can run from 8am to 8pm. Campfires are allowed only from 1 April to 31 October, never on the Easter long weekend, and not when the fire danger rating is High or above or there's a total fire ban.

When do Sandy Cape bookings open?

Sandy Cape bookings open in seasons, at 9am AWST on the first of a month. The Shire posts each release as a notice on its SpacetoCo page. These are the releases it has announced since 2025:

That's three releases a year, each about a month before its season starts. The Shire's booking terms say the release period varies by season, between two and six months. They say peak holidays like Christmas and Easter open only two to three months ahead, "to mitigate the risk of no shows and 'site hogging'". Easter 2027 opens about eight weeks ahead, because Good Friday is 26 March.

The Shire hasn't announced the release for June to October 2027 yet. Going by 2025 and 2026, I'd expect it at 9am AWST on 1 May 2027, but that's my guess. Check the notice on the SpacetoCo page.

What happened when summer opened on 1 October 2026

The summer release opened at 9am AWST on Thursday 1 October 2026, as the Shire's notice said. Early that morning, the booking form for a November night had no price. It said the dates were "invite only" and asked for a password. It also showed a countdown: "Public booking opens in 03 hours : 30 minutes : 15 seconds (9:00 am)". If you see that before a release, it means the nights aren't on sale yet.

Schnerp's first scan after the release, at 9:00:01am, found Main Campground Site 103 free for nine nights from Sunday 15 November. A Schnerp request was waiting for that stay, and the alert went out straight away. At 9:01:40am, 99 seconds later, the site was gone. That's one site, not a rate, but it shows how fast a particular site can go on release morning.

The rush was for particular sites and nights, not the whole summer. On the evening of 12 October 2026, 11 days after the release, Schnerp read SpacetoCo's availability for all 108 Main Campground sites. Most summer nights still had plenty of room:

The week between Christmas and New Year was the tightest, with 27 to 40 sites free on each night from 27 December to 1 January. Outside that week, every night had at least 50 sites free, and weekends were busier than weeknights. The North Bush and South Bush areas had room for a vehicle on every night from 1 November to 28 February. Nights from 1 March 2027 showed nothing free, because they haven't been released.

Easter 2027 and the April school holidays

Easter 2027 runs from Good Friday 26 March to Easter Monday 29 March. The WA school holidays run from Saturday 10 April to Sunday 25 April 2027, between Term 1 and Term 2. Monday 26 April is the Anzac Day public holiday. All of those nights open in the same release, at 9am AWST on Monday 1 February 2027.

Schnerp started watching Sandy Cape in late September 2026, so it hasn't seen an Easter there yet. The closest it has seen is the end of the WA spring school holidays. Friday 9 October 2026 was the last Friday before Term 4 started on Monday 12 October. A Schnerp request was watching 96 of the 108 Main Campground sites for that night.

Between Tuesday 6 and Thursday 8 October, Schnerp saw 10 openings for that Friday across eight sites. Two of the sites came back twice. Seven of the 10 were gone again within 95 minutes. The other three lasted between six and a half and 11 hours.

When Schnerp last checked, on the Thursday evening, all 96 sites were booked for the Friday. So a holiday Friday at Sandy Cape fills up, and it still turns over in the last few days. I'd expect Easter to behave the same way, only busier.

How cancellations work at Sandy Cape

The Shire's booking terms give a full refund, less any booking fees, if you cancel two or more days before your check-in date. You can cancel or edit a booking in your SpacetoCo account at any time. The SpacetoCo site listings show a looser line: "Full refund (minus booking fee) on cancellations up until anytime before your booking." The two don't agree, so I'd treat two days as the rule.

If you don't turn up on your check-in date and haven't told the Shire, it can treat you as a no-show. It may cancel your whole booking and release the site, and it charges a $100 no-show fee to your card. The Shire's terms describe no waitlist or cancellation alert. A cancelled site simply goes back on sale on SpacetoCo, to whoever finds it first.

That fits what Schnerp saw in October. All 10 openings for the school holiday Friday came back within three days of arrival, either side of the two-day refund cutoff.

How to get a Sandy Cape site for Easter or a full weekend

Here's what I'd do:

• For summer 2026-27, just book. On 12 October 2026, most summer nights had dozens of free sites. Only the week between Christmas and New Year was tight.
• For Easter or April 2027, be ready at 9am AWST on 1 February. Log in to SpacetoCo beforehand and have your vehicle registration handy. Pick a first, second and third site, because a favourite site can go in under two minutes.
• If checkout sends you back to the main page, move on. Someone else got that site first. Go straight to your next choice.
• If a site vanishes from the search, look again in 15 minutes. Someone may only be holding it in their cart. An unpaid hold runs out after 15 minutes.
• For a booked-out weekend, watch the last three days. That's when the October openings came back, and most were gone within an hour or two.
• Consider the bush areas if you're self-contained. North Bush and South Bush had room on every summer night when Schnerp checked.

Refreshing 108 sites by hand for three days isn't a good use of a holiday. Set up a Schnerp request for Sandy Cape with your dates, and Schnerp will scan SpacetoCo and alert you when a site comes back. A request you set now also alerts you when the Easter nights are released, as one did at 9:00am on 1 October. An alert doesn't hold the site, so be logged in and ready.

For two more WA release days, see how Rottnest Island's monthly open day and the Ningaloo camping monthly drop work. For other WA school holiday campgrounds, see Lucky Bay and Conto and Boranup. For every state's system, see our state-by-state guide to Australian camping bookings.