We camped for one night at Brewery Flat Reserve just on the outskirts of Narrandera. This great campground is located in between the Murrumbidgee River and the Main Canal.

The campground is provided by the Narrandera Shire for the traveling public in self contained vehicles. You can stay for free for up to 72 hours. There is a toilet block, multiple rubbish bins around the site, a couple of shelters with BBQ’s and fire pits. The campground is a large flat grassy site with plenty of room for lots of RV’s.

It is the site of the old Oakbank Brewery, a listed historical building. The Brewery had its heyday in the Riverina between the 1890’s and mid-1920’s. The Oakbank Brewery was amongst the most modern in NSW and was run with all the latest equipment from England. Up to 100 men were employed there. During 1921, the brewery had a capacity of 20,000 gallons of stout, bottled and draught beer and could produce 10,000 bottles of beer and 15,000 bottles of cordial daily.

Branches sprang up throughout the Riverina and fifty hotels in the region were controlled by the brewery. In 1924 the brewery was sold to Tooths of Sydney for a reported price of £200,000. The new owners closed down the brewing operation, but the Oakbank Cordial Factory – followed by a number of other operators – continued with the production of cordials at the site until 1986.

Today it is a private residence.

You can find Brewery Flat listed on most camping apps. Well done Narrandera Shire for providing this fabulous facility.

A boat ramp and a pontoon are available at the river although the river was so full during our visit that the water covered the walkway out to the pontoon.

It had been raining for a couple of days but we were still able to find a campsite for our motorhome and our daughter’s caravan that was on lovely thick grass and reasonably dry.

We had three grandchildren with us and I took them for a very long walk to see if we could find koalas as the area is a koala sanctuary. We walked all the way to Lake Talbot and back but only saw lots of birds and one goat…..no koalas.

The children were so excited the next morning when we were packing up to find a koala up as tree not far from where we were camped. That really made our stay a special one. It’s not very often you get to see a wild koala.