La Perouse Point – Larpa to every Sydney diver – is the western tip of the La Perouse headland, and the drift around it is one of the best shallow macro dives in Botany Bay. Starting from the small bay below the right-angle car park, the route drops onto sand at 8 m and follows a reef wall about two metres high south and then west, lined with boulders that have created small overhangs and a couple of little canyons. Around the point, more than 100 m offshore, the depth reaches 14 m on a high tide and the wall becomes less distinct, then it turns north-east and east into Frenchmans Bay as the bottom shallows to 4–5 m, finishing at the sand gutter of the old boat slipway – the beach itself is a poor exit.

The wall is a critter gallery: weedy seadragons including tiny juveniles, dwarf firefish (three on one dive), blue-green nudibranchs, pygmy pipehorses on the algae, seahorses on the sponges, pineapplefish under the overhangs, red Indianfish, large cuttlefish, black anglerfish and blue-ringed octopus, which are common enough here to warrant real care in the shallows. Tidal flow around the point changes direction from section to section but is never strong, and the dive is planned on an incoming or high tide because visibility, never great, is best then and falls away towards the exit. The old Cable Station above the point houses the Laperouse Museum, commemorating the French expedition of 1788, and the wharf that once stood below was destroyed in a storm in May 1974.

McFadyen rates it quite a good dive that is let down mainly by visibility. It suits divers who enjoy slow, careful searching and want an alternative to the Bare Island crowds a few hundred metres away.

Park at the eastern end of the right-angle car park west of the main Bare Island parking on Anzac Parade, La Perouse. Go through the break in the armco fence, across the grass and down onto the rock platform on the western side of the small bay; enter over the rocks. Drift south then west along the wall, around La Perouse Point (100 m+ offshore) and north into Frenchmans Bay, exiting via the sand gutter of the old boat slipway with clear rocks either side – the beach is not an easy exit. 40–60 minutes; walk 300 m back to the car.

Sheltered from southerly weather by the Kurnell peninsula and from the east by the headland, so it is diveable in most conditions; a big north-easterly swell into the bay is the exception. Do it on an incoming or high tide for visibility, which is often mediocre and worsens towards the Frenchmans Bay exit. Tidal flow varies in direction around the point but is never too strong to be a problem.

Blue-ringed octopus are common in the shallows, and the rock fishers here have a documented history of hostility to divers.

Enter on the west side of the small bay, descend to 8 m sand and drift south then west along the 2 m wall with its boulders, overhangs and small canyons, round the point at 12–14 m where the wall flattens, then follow it north-east and east as it shallows to 4–5 m. Exit through the old slipway gutter. 40–45 minutes moving briskly, 60 at a macro pace.

Abyss Scuba Diving and Sydney Dive Academy occasionally guide it as a macro drift; mostly experienced independents.