Can you have a campfire in Queensland this spring? 2026 rules

Queensland's bushfire season runs from July to December, and sometimes through to February, according to the Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, so a spring camping trip sits inside it by definition. The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council placed south-east Queensland among the regions facing heightened fire risk in its Seasonal Bushfire Outlook published on 19 August 2026. None of that makes a campfire illegal. The campfire rules Queensland applies are narrow rather than absolute, and they make the checking part non-negotiable, because the answer changes by council area, by park, and by the day you arrive. The honest problem is the order in which most campers find out: the ranger walks over after the fire is lit.

What are the campfire rules Queensland applies in national parks?

Only where the park has already built you somewhere to do it. Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service states that camp fires are only permitted in existing QPWS constructed fireplaces, fire rings or existing fire locations, which rules out the improvised ring of stones that looks harmless and leaves a scar on the ground for a decade. Plenty of camping areas have no fireplace at all, and in those the answer is simply no, regardless of how careful you intend to be. The same guidance requires that fires be extinguished with water when unattended: not smothered with sand, not banked up and left to burn down while you sleep, and not walked away from for the twenty minutes it takes to drive to the lookout. Check the page for your specific camping area rather than the park as a whole, because the fireplace exists at the camping area level and two areas in the same park can have opposite answers.

Why can you not collect firewood?

Because the fallen timber is part of the park, not fuel that happens to be lying there. QPWS states that firewood must not be collected, and that all timber and tree branches within the area are protected and cannot be collected or used for fires. Dead wood on the ground is habitat: it shelters reptiles, insects and small mammals, and stripping it changes a campsite faster than the fire ever does. The practical consequence for you: firewood is something you buy before you arrive, from a service station or produce store outside the park, and you buy it dry and split. This is where the honest failure happens, and it has nothing to do with the law. Campers plan the fire and forget the fuel, the same way first trips fail on the boring parts covered in our beginner’s checklist for Queensland, then arrive with a permit, a legal fireplace and nothing to burn, or with green wood that smokes for an hour and never truly catches. Pack the wood the way you pack the water.

Does Queensland declare total fire bans?

No, and the wording matters far more than it sounds. The Queensland Fire Department states that the term Total Fire Ban is not used within Queensland. What Queensland declares instead is a local fire ban, which can cover all or part of a local council area and applies for a set timeframe, and, when conditions become extremely dangerous, a state of fire emergency for all or part of the state. If you learned to camp in New South Wales or Victoria, you have been trained to search for a phrase that returns nothing here, and nothing reads exactly like no ban in force. Under a local fire ban, campfires are considered open fires and cannot be lit, and that extends to open flame fire pits, braziers and similar devices. A permit does not survive it either: all permits to light fires are automatically cancelled during a fire ban. The department is also worth naming correctly when you search, because it was renamed: the former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services became the Queensland Fire Department on 1 July 2024.

What can you still cook on when a ban is in place?

Gas, and only gas. The Queensland Fire Department allows gas, butane or propane barbecues, including gas and spirit stoves, during fire bans, on three conditions: they do not have the potential to make embers or ignite nearby ground fuels and vegetation, they are not left unattended, and they are suitably contained. Solid fuel barbecues, the ones burning charcoal or heat beads or wood, are out for the duration. Inside national parks, QPWS adds a geometry to it: a manufactured gas or fuel appliance must sit at least 20 centimetres off the ground and more than two metres from flammable material, which includes vegetation. Two metres is a larger gap than most people picture, and it is why a stove running on a picnic table with a shrub behind it is a problem even though the flame is fully enclosed.

How do you check a fire ban before you leave home?

Three places, in this order. The Queensland Fire Department publishes bans by local government area at fire.qld.gov.au/fire-bans, with a page for each council and an interactive map if you would rather see the boundary than read a list. Second, the park itself: QPWS posts park alerts against each park, and a local fire ban usually appears there before it surfaces in a general search. Third, the phone, on 1800 020 440, which is the option that still works when you are on the road and the reception will not load a map. Check the council area you will be camping in, not the one you live in, because a ban in Brisbane says nothing about the Southern Downs, and most of the sites in our list of bookable campsites within three hours of Brisbane sit in a different council area from the one you drove out of. And check the morning you leave rather than the week before: a ban applies for a set timeframe, so an old check is not a check, and a trip that runs past the timeframe printed on the notice needs a second look before the last night.

What do you do if a fire warning lands mid-trip?

You act on the rating, not on what you can see from the campsite. The Australian Fire Danger Rating System runs four levels and each one carries an instruction rather than a description. Moderate means plan and prepare. High means be ready to act, and the system says plainly that the safest choice is to avoid bushfire-prone regions. Extreme means take action now to protect your life and property, and to reconsider travel through bushfire areas. Catastrophic means leave bushfire risk areas, because homes cannot withstand fires in those conditions, and a tent is not a home. The decision people get wrong is the one at High: the weather is often pleasant, the fire is somewhere else, and leaving feels like an overreaction. Leaving is cheap on a Saturday morning and expensive on a Sunday afternoon when a road closes behind you.

Which fire should you plan on for this trip?

Assume you will be lighting it in wind, in the dark, with wood that has been in the boot since the last trip. Outside a ban and inside a built fireplace, Queensland requires no permit for a fire smaller than 2 metres tall and 2 metres wide; anything larger needs one, and permits are free and issued by a Queensland Fire Department Fire Warden. The rest is preparation rather than skill. Buy dry split wood before you arrive. Put a full container of water beside the fireplace before you strike anything, because water is the method the rules require and locating it in the dark is not a plan. And carry something that takes a flame without paper or petrol: the Often natural wool fire starters, $33.60, are wool bound in wax, which lights with cold hands and burns long enough to dry the first piece of kindling. The honest limit is worth stating: they will not rescue wood that is genuinely damp, and since you cannot collect wood inside the park, damp wood is a mistake you make at home, not one you fix at the fireplace.