“There's a cockatoo on the safari tent's railing that screams at exactly 6:14 AM, and after two mornings you start setting your alarm for 6:13 just to beat it.”

The Great Ocean Road spits you out at Anglesea like a secret it didn't mean to tell. You come around a bend past Torquay, the road narrows, and suddenly there's a petrol station, a fish and chip shop called The Anglesea Fish Bar, and a roundabout that sends you either toward the surf beach or inland along the river. Murray Street is the inland turn. You pass a row of weatherboard houses with overgrown agapanthus and a bloke hosing down a tinny in his driveway. He waves. You wave back. This is the kind of town where you wave at strangers because there aren't enough of them to ignore. The holiday park is at the end of the street, behind a low fence, and you can hear kids shrieking from the jumping pillow before you've even turned the engine off.

BIG4 Anglesea Holiday Park is the kind of place that knows exactly what it is and doesn't apologize. It's a caravan park. There are powered sites, cabins, and — the reason you're reading this — safari tents. The tents are the move if you want to feel like you're camping without actually doing any of the work that makes camping miserable. No wrestling with tent poles in the wind. No sleeping on a rock you swore wasn't there when you laid down the groundsheet. You just show up, unzip, and there's a bed. A real bed, with sheets someone else washed.

Canvas walls and clean bathrooms

The safari tent is essentially a permanent canvas structure on a raised platform. Inside, it's simple — a double bed, bunks for the kids, a small table, and enough hooks to hang your wet towels from the beach. There's no ensuite, which means you're walking to the shared amenities block in your thongs at 11 PM. But here's the thing that gets mentioned by every family who's ever stayed here, and it's worth repeating: the bathrooms are genuinely clean. Not holiday-park clean, where you lower your expectations and wear shoes in the shower. Actually clean. Someone is maintaining these facilities with a devotion that borders on spiritual.

Mornings in the tent start with light filtering through the canvas in a warm amber wash. You hear magpies first, then the cockatoos, then the distant bass thump of someone's car stereo in the parking area. The air smells like eucalyptus and damp grass. If you have small kids, they're already awake and asking about the jumping pillow, which sits in the middle of the park like a giant white blister and serves as the social hub for every child under ten. There's also a playground, a camp kitchen, and enough green space that kids disappear for hours and come back with grass stains and stories about a lizard they almost caught.

The park sits a short walk from the Anglesea River, which empties into the ocean at a wide, calm mouth perfect for toddlers and nervous swimmers. The main surf beach is about a ten-minute walk north, past the golf course where kangaroos graze on the fairways like they pay membership fees. This is not a joke. There are kangaroos on the golf course. Dozens of them. You can walk right up to the fence and watch them chew grass with the slow indifference of creatures who know they own the place.

“The kangaroos on the golf course chew with the slow indifference of creatures who know they own the place.”

For food, the town is small but functional. The Anglesea Fish Bar does a solid flake and chips — order at the counter, eat on the bench outside, fight the seagulls. The Anglesea General Store has coffee that's better than it needs to be. If you want a proper sit-down meal, The Captain Moonlite pub has burgers and a beer garden where kids can run around while you pretend to supervise. The IGA on the main road covers groceries, and the camp kitchen back at the park has barbecues and enough bench space to cook a family dinner without elbowing a stranger.

One honest note: the safari tents don't have heating, and Anglesea gets cold at night even in summer. Bring layers. Bring a beanie for the walk to the bathroom. The canvas holds warmth about as well as a screen door, and by midnight you'll be grateful for every blanket on the bed. Also, the powered sites nearest the jumping pillow get noise until about 8 PM — excited-kid noise, which is either charming or unbearable depending on whether the kids are yours.

The river mouth at golden hour

On the last afternoon, you walk down to the river mouth because someone at the camp kitchen told you the light is good there around five. They were underselling it. The river is flat and copper-colored, and a few families are still swimming in the shallows. A kid is throwing a tennis ball for a kelpie that brings it back every single time with the same manic joy. The headland to the south catches the last sun and turns the color of terracotta. You stand there in your sandy thongs and realize you haven't checked your phone in hours.

Driving out the next morning, you pass the bloke with the tinny again. He's hosing it down. You're not sure if it's the same session or a new one. You wave. He waves back. The Great Ocean Road takes you, and Anglesea shrinks in the mirror. If you need a reason to come back, it's not the park. It's the river mouth at golden hour, and the fact that nobody there was trying to sell you anything.

Safari tents at BIG4 Anglesea start around US$ 92 a night, more during school holidays and peak summer weekends. Book early for January — this stretch of coast fills up fast, and the tents go before the cabins do.