Oakfield Ranch Camel Rides

Stockton Beach's dune system — the largest moving sand mass in the Southern Hemisphere — gets crossed by 4WD tours and sandboarders most days, but this ranch's camel string offers a quieter way through it, following the beach and the edge of the dunes at a walking pace. Rod Sansom founded the ranch, and camel rides run most days of the week (closed Wednesdays outside school and public holidays), departing from the lower car park at the Anna Bay end of the beach. Group sizes are kept small and the pace unhurried enough to take in the scale of the dunes properly, rather than blur past them from a moving vehicle. It's a working ranch rather than a polished tourism operation — camels, horses and a menagerie of other animals are part of daily life here — and the rides reflect that: straightforward, animal-led, and grounded in a landscape that's genuinely strange up close. A short drive from Nelson Bay and the rest of Port Stephens.