Beach Number:

nsw583

Includes Beaches:

Tuross Heads

State/Region:

NSW - Tuross Head

Post Code:

2537

General Beach Hazard Rating:

6/10 (Moderately hazardous)

Beach

Tuross Head has two small beaches (NSW 583-584) on the south side of the headland of the same name. They can be accessed from street parking on the north side and a car park and caravan park behind the southern beach. Tuross Head Main Beach (NSW 583) is 250 m long, commencing 200 m west of the head and curving to the south to a small rocky outcrop. It faces the southeast and receives waves averaging 1.5 m, which usually produce an attached bar and a permanent rip running north against the head. However the beach and surf are strongly influenced by the lake mouth bars and channels. At times a tidal bar forms seaward of the beach and reduces wave height at the beach, but can funnel strong tidal currents past the beach. This is the main swimming beach for the head and patrolled during the summer school holidays. It is backed by a low foredune, then road and bluffs rising to houses.

Swimming

These are five potentially hazardous beaches, with the northern three dominated by rocks and rips, while the southern two depend to some degree on the nature of the lake mouth. Best at the main Tuross Head beach which is patrolled during the Christmas holidays, but even here stay between the flags and close in, and away from the inlet channels or currents.

Surfing

There are beach breaks off all of the beaches, as well as waves out on the tidal shoals off the southern beaches.

Fishing

There are good gutters against all the rocks as well as the lake entrance in the south.

General

Tuross Head is a community of 2200 located 5 km in from the highway. It occupies a ridge of sloping grass-covered granite, bordered by Coila Lake to the north and Tuross Lake to the south. At the coast the ridge forms 2 km of rock-dominated shoreline, with five small exposed beaches (NSW 580-584) in amongst the resilient rocks (Fig. 4.392).