The southern side of Refuge Cove is the shallowest and gentlest of Scuba Doctor's Prom sites and the one it recommends as a good night dive location for campers. The cove itself – a natural refuge with a 400 m entrance widening to a kilometre, surrounded by steep forested slopes and floored with two beaches of pure, rounded yellow quartz grains – is the eastern Prom's anchorage, and the walkers' campsite sits behind the southern beach. Off that beach the granite boulders slope down to a sandy bottom at 9 m, with kelp and mixed algae on the rock, seagrass on the sand, and the usual sheltered-cove community: wrasse, leatherjackets, old wives, morwong, zebrafish and sweep over the reef, bullseyes and blue devils in the shade under the boulders, cuttlefish, octopus and decorator crabs in the gaps, stingarees and flathead on the sand, and at night crabs, shrimp, squid and hunting octopus everywhere.

Scuba Doctor notes that from shore the site is really only accessible for snorkelling and apnea diving because of the walk – Refuge Cove is a two-day trek from Tidal River – and that scuba divers arrive by boat. In practice it is dived by yacht and trailer-boat crews using the cove as a base, as a check-out dive, a snorkel, or a night dive from the anchorage, with the north wall across the cove as the main dive. Its value is shelter: when an easterly swell makes the north wall surgy or the outer coast is unworkable, the southern beach is usually calm, and it gives beginners and snorkellers on an eastern Prom trip a safe, clear-water introduction to the granite reef.

Within the marine national park; no take.

Boat only. Launch at Port Welshpool (sealed all-tide ramp, jetty and trailer parking on Corner Inlet, 2.5 hours from Melbourne) and run south through Corner Inlet's marked channels and out past Rabbit Island down the eastern Prom coast – about 30–40 km and 60–90 minutes to Sealers/Refuge Cove, longer to Waterloo Bay and South East Point. The coast is exposed to easterly and southerly swell and has no facilities; carry fuel, radio and all air, and plan around the weather window and Corner Inlet tides.

Refuge Cove is about 33 km from Port Welshpool; anchor in the cove and dive from the boat or dinghy off the southern beach. Walkers on the Sealers Cove–Refuge Cove–Waterloo Bay circuit camp here and can snorkel or freedive from the beach; the walk from Tidal River is 20+ km, so scuba from shore is impractical.

The most sheltered dive on the eastern Prom: best with calm seas, no swell and no wind, with light offshore south-westerly to south-easterly winds acceptable; avoid strong onshore northerly to easterly winds, which push swell into the cove. Diveable most settled days from spring to autumn. The eastern Prom coast is reached only after a long boat run from Port Welshpool, so the whole day's forecast must be settled: swell under 1–1.5 m, light winds, and no change due.

Easterly and south-easterly swell is the main problem on this coast; a westerly wind flattens it but makes Corner Inlet's entrance choppy on the ebb. Visibility is typically 10–25 m and best in autumn after several calm days.

Enter off the southern beach or from a dinghy, follow the boulders down to the sand at 9 m and work along the southern shore of the cove towards the entrance and back, keeping the rock on one shoulder. Ideal as a night dive for boat campers: enter at dusk, work the boulders slowly with a torch and exit on the beach.

No dive charter operates at Wilsons Promontory. Sites are dived from club and private trailer boats – Dive La Trobe, VSAG, Melbourne University Underwater Club and Dive Victoria Group run occasional camping-and-diving trips – launching at Tidal River (beach launch, permit/key from Parks Victoria), Port Welshpool or Sandy Point. Wilsons Promontory Cruises (Port Welshpool) runs sightseeing cruises to Skull Rock and the islands but no diving.