In photos: Australian beaches

Australia has over 30,000km of coastline. By any standards, that is a fair amount. With all that coastline comes a lot of beach front – in fact, with over 10,000 to choose from, Australia has more beaches than any other country in the world!

In this post I thought I’d share some of the variety that this massive coastline has to offer, from moody clouds, to giant sand dunes to classic surfer beaches. Enjoy!

Oz has a lot of coastline. I think I mentioned that already. There are so many beaches in fact, that the people who started naming them clearly lost enthusiasm, and just started naming them based on their length. Like the ninety mile beach. Or the eighty mile beach. You get the idea.

This isn’t actually one of those beaches, instead, it’s a beach in the Newland Head Conservation Park in South Australia. i can’t remember its name, but I’m sure it’s something imaginative like “beach with fifty miles of epic cliff.”

I did have remarkably good weather for most of my time in Tasmania, but I quite liked this moody picture of a storm brewing over the bay of fires, so that is the shot that is in this post. Don’t be put off though – Tassie has beaches to rival the rest of Australia.. even if the water can be a tad on the Antarctic side of cool.

This post wouldn’t be complete without including Australia’s most famous beach – that being Bondi in Sydney. This beach is great for learning to surf, as well as being so close to Sydney that it’s almost a crime not to visit if you’re in town. Good fish and chips too!

Fraser Island is, frankly, a stunning place to visit. Just off the Queensland coast, it is home to spectacular lakes, incredible beaches, and the endless pounding ocean. The beach here is all the more remarkable for also being the road.. and the runway. As the picture below shows. Heathrow, eat your heart out.

These granitic boulders are found at the Elephant Rocks beach in Western Australia, near the town of Denmark. Apparently part of the rock formations here look like a herd of elephants. Personally, I never saw it. Still stunning though.

Cape Le Grand National Park, way down at the bottom of Western Australia, is home to beaches that would rival any tropical paradise. Turquoise waters, pure white sands… you get the idea. There are also a whole number of walks that take you between the coves, across the plains, and up the funky looking hills in the area. Splendid stuff!

Did you know that Australia has the largest mobile sand dunes in the southern hemisphere? Well, I didn’t until I visited, giant sand dunes not previously having been something I associated with the land down under. Turns out, they are pretty big and pretty mobile. You’ll find them not too far from the town of Port Stephens on the New South Wales coast!

Oh, Byron Bay. What a town. This is a mecca for hippies, surfers and party animals. I have to admit, I was less than impressed on my first arrival (well, it was raining), but then ended up falling in love, both with the place, and with my girl, and stayed for nearly two months. You just can’t beat living by a beach and nice long walks to get a romance going.

Go, but be prepared to be captivated. Or appalled. One of the two.

You know when a place is famous as being the most something of something, rather than just for being a wonderfully pretty place where you can camp and enjoy life? Well, West Cape Howe National Park falls into that category, being as it is, home to the most southern point in Western Australia.

Admittedly, this totally worked on me, as it was the main reason for visiting (most southern point! Of an Australia state!), but it is also worth visiting for views and beaches like this. And yes, that bit in the lower right is the campsite. That was a good spot!

Last, but by no means least, in my post of photos of Australian beaches, comes this shot of Wilsons Prom National Park. A mere stones throw (by Australian standards at least) from Melbourne, this is a wonderful national park chock full of walking and beach based activities. It was also home to the only campsite I stayed at in Australia which had an outdoor cinema. What is not to love!

Well, those were some of my photos of Australia beaches. Have you visited any of these? Got a favourite beach in Australia that I left off the list? Get all excitable in the comments below!

This article originally appeared on travel and photography blog http://www.findingtheuniverse.com/, and was written by Laurence Norah. Please contact Laurence for re-use of text or images.

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