Bents Basin State Conservation Area is a 400 hectare picnic and camping ground in Western Sydney located between Camden and Penrith.

It is a popular family camping spot for Sydney, with a campground that offers sites for tents, trailer and caravans in a scenic location by the water.

The Bents Basin precinct is centred around a deep waterhole that forms part of a gorge on the Nepean River and is a popular location for swimming, canoeing and fishing, supporting the picnic and campground uses of the site.

In 2011, NSW NPWS commissioned Environmental Partnership to prepare an Access and Facilities Masterplan for the Bents Basin SCA. The proposals relate to improving the sense of arrrival for visitors, upgrade of vehicle access and parking, additional hike & bike trails, and revitalisation of the water front picnic areas.

Since the original commission, Environmental Partnership has worked with NPWS to refine proposals to meet current visitor demands and changing visitor needs in 2016/2017 and again in 2019. Additional work has included the proposals for the revitalisation of the existing campground, options for ‘glamping’, additional temporary parking facilities and the inclusion of a new visitor precinct to the north west of the basin, ‘Tara Precinct’. EP was asked to prepare concepts for locating visitor facilities and recreational spaces within this new precinct.