Campfire
Types
How you stack the wood decides how your fire behaves: fast and hot, slow and steady, good coals for cooking, or tucked out of the wind. Pick the lay for the job.
Check for fire bans first. On a Total Fire Ban day you cannot light a fire in the open, and that includes a campfire. Check the fire danger rating and the rules with your state fire service and the park or council before you strike a match.
Which Fire Do You Need?
Start every fire with tinder and small kindling. The lay is how you arrange what goes around it.
Fast Heat or Boiling Water
- Teepee
Cooking
- Log cabin, then the keyhole for steady coals
Windy Day
- Lean-to, with the big log on the windward side
All Night, Little Wood
- Star fire
Build Each One
All six start the same way: a fist-sized ball of tinder and a handful of match-thin kindling in the middle.
Teepee
- Lean pencil-thick sticks around the tinder in a cone
- Leave a door on the windward side to light it
- Add thicker sticks to the cone as it catches
- Best for: quick heat, boiling a billy, getting a fire going in the first place
Log Cabin
- Build a small teepee
- Lay two sticks either side of it, then two across the ends, like a cabin
- Keep stacking, each layer a little shorter
- Best for: cooking. It burns down to a flat, even bed of coals
Lean-To
- Lay a big log on the side the wind comes from
- Put the tinder against it
- Lean kindling from the ground onto the log, over the tinder
- Best for: windy days, and as a reflector behind you
Star Fire
- Get a small fire going
- Lay five logs like spokes of a wheel, ends in the fire
- Push each log in as its end burns away
- Best for: a long night with little firewood. Pull the logs out to shrink the fire
Keyhole
- Make a ring of rocks with a short, narrow slot on one side
- Build the fire in the round part
- Rake hot coals into the slot and cook over them
- Best for: cooking with pots or a grill while the main fire keeps making coals
Dakota Fire Hole
- Dig a hole about 30 cm deep and wide
- Dig a second, smaller hole about 30 cm away on the windward side, and join them with a tunnel at the bottom
- Build and light the fire in the main hole. Air feeds in through the tunnel
- Drown it with water until the ashes are cold, then fill both holes in. Only dig where it is allowed
Avoid roots and peat.
Never dig a fire hole where there are tree roots or peaty, organic soil. Fire can travel underground along roots and come up somewhere else hours later.
Video Guides
Three of the most useful lays, built start to finish.
3 types of campfires: how and when to build them (L.L.Bean)
Log cabin, lean-to and teepee fire lays (ReWyld Outdoors)
Videos are from other creators on YouTube. Fire rules in Australia may be stricter than where they were filmed.
Put It Out Properly
Whatever the lay, the finish is the same.
Drown, Stir, Feel
- 1 Drown it with water until the hissing stops
- 2 Stir the ashes, then drown it again
- 3 Feel for heat with the back of your hand. Any warmth, repeat
Leave No Trace
- Scatter cold ashes away from water where allowed
- Fill in fire holes and trenches only once the ashes are cold
- Put rocks back where you found them
Use water, not soil.
Covered coals can stay hot for hours. If it is too hot to touch, it is too hot to leave.
Build Better Fires
Fire starters, axes for splitting and camp cooking gear.
More How-To Guides
This guide is general information only. Fire rules differ between states, territories, parks and shires and change with the season, so check the rules where you are before lighting any fire, and never light one on a Total Fire Ban day. In a life-threatening emergency, call Triple Zero (000).