Freshwater Bay is named after the fresh water that drains out of the backing dunes onto the beach, particularly toward the southern corner where there is also a safe anchorage. The bay is 10 km wide between southern Cliff Point and northern Quoin Island and contains 12 km of beaches, for the most part facing east but curving around in the protected southern corner to face north. A 4WD track also reaches the southern corner, which has long been a favourite camping site and anchorage. The main beach (1342) runs continuously from the southern slopes for 12 km to Freshwater Camp. Apart from one rocky outcrop in the surf 1 km down the beach and small Single Rock 1 km off the southern end, it is a continuous sandy beach. It receives waves averaging 0.6 m along much of the beach; higher during strong winds and occasional swell. The high wave conditions at times produce a double bar system. The beach has a 30 m wide high tide beach, then a 150 m wide low tide bar that is usually cut by rips every 150 to 200 m, producing up to 50 rips along the beach, then a shore parallel trough off this bar and finally an outer bar that is also cut by more widely spaced rips. Toward the southern end, the wave height drops in lee of Cliff Point and the outer bar merges with the beach, making Freshwater Camp Beach only 50 m wide and free of rips. Backing the entire beach is a massive, nested, longwalled parabolic dune system, now largely vegetated. This extends on average 2 km inland to the mangrove-fringed eastern shore of South Arm. Five kilometres across South Arm is an older system of beach ridges extending another 3 km inland. These represent an ancient high sea level shoreline and are at least 120 000 years old. At that time Mount Flinders was an island and the waves moved between the island and Cliff Point to reach the earlier beaches. In the southern 2 km the dunes give way to a swamp that is drained by a small creek across the southern end of the beach. read more

Beach Length: 11.5km