Beach T 825 commences on the northern side of the rocks and trends to the west-northwest for 9.6 km to the sandy mouth and backing elongate lagoon of the Lagoon River. The beach is exposed to the full forces of the westerly waves and winds and is one of the most dynamic and possibly the highest energy beach on the Australian coast. In addition it is crossed by more than 10 smaller creeks, including Monster, Chimney and Hunters creeks, flowing down the densely vegetated granite slopes, which rise inland to 150-200 m. The creeks tend to be deflected to the south along the beach up to 100-200 m. The result is a very high energy triple bar surf zone and an active, though often saturated, dune field extending 1-2 km up the slopes to heights of 100 m (Fig. 4.166). Finally granite boulders and outcrops are scattered along the shoreline. The surf zone consists of a 100 m wide inner bar cut by rips every 400-600 m, which induce a highly rhythmic shoreline. The second bar lies 300 m offshore and has rips spaced roughly every 750 m, while the outer bar is located 600-800 m offshore with rips up to 1,000 m apart, some of the largest rips in the world. This is one of the few open coast beaches in the world where persistent high swell can generate and maintain such a wide rip-dominated surf zone. The waves, rips, creeks and rocks destabilised the back beach, with no foredune along most of the beach permitting the sand to blow straight into a climbing transgressive dune systems between each of the creeks, and in some cases smothering the smaller creeks. The active dunes extend up to 2 km inland with some of the older vegetated dunes reaching 2.5 km. The lower reaches and deflation hollows are saturated by the creeks and groundwater seepage, with the higher dunes climbing to over 100 m. The dunes consist of climbing transverse dunes of varying size, together with wet deflection hollows, and deflated older dune surfaces and paleosols, with each major unit separated by the incised creeks and the boundary rivers. read more

Beach Length: 0.6km