Camping Australia... in Albania??? - 18th June 2026
- Brett Sedgwick
- Jun 27
- 3 min read
Pershendetje from Shkoder, Albania.
After we spent the night in Delphi, we had to drive back to Camping Maslina in Buljarica to pick up our rego papers.
When we bought Delph, we left England before the rego papers had been sent through and we were told that we couldn’t enter Albania without the originals. Technically, we weren’t allowed to enter Montenegro either, but we promised the customs officer that they were being sent to the caravan park and he let us through.
Anyway, we’d had several back and forth emails between us and Maslina and due to the language barrier it was 50/50 whether the papers were there or at a sorting facility. The Gods of Travel must have been smiling on us that day as they were in reception, and we didn’t even have to turn off the engine, before we were on the road again…whew!!
45 minutes later we were at the Montenegrin/Albanian border crossing with passports, rego papers and International Drivers Licenses in hand.
An hour's wait in the scorching sun saw us get to the window, where they glanced at our passports, wrote down the rego, sighted the papers and one minute later we were on the road in Albania! Pretty easy really.
We drove for about another 2 km before we saw a sign for a caravan park called “Camping Australia” complete with kangaroo logo.
Surely this was fate and we had to check it out.
Yes, yes, it was.
We rolled off the highway down a dodgy looking dirt road, passed scrub and closed down tourist attractions before we drove through the Camping Australia gate into a lush oasis of grass and hundreds of trees, including over 100 pomegranates.
A smiling man came over to us and told us to park anywhere and then come see him in reception. We found a shady pitch near the private beach (WHAT) parked up, and went and officially met Leon.
Leon was an Albanian/Australian who had bought this land three years ago and turned it from an overgrown lot into this lush field.
He was a legend!!
Over the course of the next three days, we became great mates with him, to the point where he was telling me to get behind the bar and pour my own pints from the tap. DUDE!
He was a retired Music Teacher who had lost his wife several years ago and moved back to Albania. One of his sons was in Sydney, and the other was in Melbourne, but they’d never come over to see him. His story got sadder when he told us that he has Stage 4 cancer and flies back to Melbourne for his chemo every few months. He also has a local girlfriend, and she, too, has Stage 4 cancer, but they still eat together some nights at the park, and she visits often. The rest of the time, he mows his grass, cooks dinner and pours beers in his restaurant for his guests, and, along with his tireless employee, Rudina, runs the caravan park. He lives above the restaurant where the Australian and Albanian flags happily fly, side by side.
Over the three days, we ate great salad, bread and meat from the restaurant, watched the World Cup on the outside TV and swam in the fast flowing, freezing, but pristine river. It was scorching hot most of the time, but we sat in the shade, rode bikes early in the day to the neighbouring village of Shiroken and the outskirts of Shkoder for coffee and swam, played guitar and rested.
Great, great times.
It was actually sad to say goodbye to Leon at the end, but we promised to go back for Jen-Jen’s birthday if it gets too hot in other places in Albania and we need the cool water and warm hospitality of his place!
While we were here, we didn’t really know what to do for the next ten days before we fly home for a much needed catch up with friends and fam.
We knew that we needed to get out of the heat, so we found a parking spot at a resort near the airport for Delph, and booked ourselves in for 8 nights at an Airbnb in the heart of the capital city, Tiarana.
And that dear readers, is where we are heading now.
Talk soon,
Mirupafshim
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