The best dive sites in Australia
Ranked lists written from the full directory: which dives are worth travelling for, and why. Every entry links to the site page with depths, conditions and operators.
15 sites
The 15 Best Wreck Dives in Australia
Australia has around 8,000 known shipwrecks and a growing fleet of deliberately scuttled warships, and choosing fifteen means leaving out dozens of good dives. This list weighs…
20 sites
The 20 Best Shore Dives in Australia
Australia has more than 700 documented shore dives, and its biggest cities have some of the best in the world. This list is not about the most spectacular site reachable from a…
12 sites
The 12 Best Jetty & Pier Dives in Australia
Southern Australia's jetties are a phenomenon. Built for coastal steamers and grain ships and long since abandoned by commercial traffic, their pylons have become vertical reefs…
14 sites
The Best Dive Sites in Australia for Beginners
New divers want three things: shelter, shallow water and something to look at. These sites deliver all three on a normal day, and every one of them is used by local dive shops for…
14 sites
The Best Technical & Deep Dives in Australia
Beyond 40 m Australia has deep wrecks in Bass Strait, sinkholes in South Australia that go past 100 m, walls at Port Phillip Heads and in the Coral Sea, and cave systems under the…
10 sites
The Best Cave & Sinkhole Dives in Australia
Australian cave diving is concentrated in two limestone provinces, the Mount Gambier region of South Australia and the Nullarbor Plain of Western Australia, plus ocean caves like…
12 sites
The Best Macro & Critter Dives in Australia
Southern Australia's temperate coast is one of the world's great macro destinations, and unlike Lembeh or Anilao almost all of it is shore diving. Weedy and leafy seadragons,…
15 sites
The Best Big-Animal Dives in Australia
Grey nurse sharks, whale sharks, manta rays, fur seals, sea lions, potato cod, great whites, humpbacks and giant cuttlefish: Australia's megafauna encounters are among the most…
15 sites
The Best Dive Sites on the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef has more than 2,900 individual reefs and hundreds of named dive sites, from the day-boat moorings off Cairns to the Ribbon Reefs and the southern coral…
12 sites
The Best Dive Sites in Sydney
Sydney is the best big-city diving in the world by most measures: more than 200 sites, most of them shore dives, a no-take reserve at Manly, grey nurse sharks at Maroubra,…
12 sites
The Best Dive Sites near Melbourne
Within two hours of Melbourne you can dive the world's best pier for macro life, a scuttled frigate, a WWI submarine and a tidal wall that drops past 40 m. Cold water is the…
12 sites
The Best Dive Sites near Perth
Perth's diving is limestone reef, wreck trails and Rottnest Island, with the HMAS Swan a couple of hours south. Autumn mornings before the sea breeze are the…