For the wide lens: clear water, big animals and structure. Wrecks, walls and pinnacles with 20 m-plus visibility and sharks, rays, seals or schooling fish recorded.
Updated daily from the directory. 23 sites listed.
1. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Cannons
Old cannons among Porites corals on sand, with garden eels and gobies – and a chance of dugong, dolphins and mantas.
2. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Cologne Gardens
All-levels wall with a blooming coral reef top and big orange gorgonians deeper; snapper schools at full moon and bumphead parrotfish in summer.
3. Christmas Island · External Territory
Flying Fish Cove
Arguably Australia's best shore dive: a pristine coral slope and wall 50 m from the car park, endemic and hybrid reef fish, and whale sharks passing the drop-off in season.
4. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
The Rip (Direction Island)
A fast, coral-lined drift channel from the ocean into the lagoon, full of sharks, humphead parrotfish and Napoleon wrasse, with a safety rope to stop and watch.
5. Coral Sea · External Territory
Admiralty (Osprey Reef)
A coral village of huge bommies with a centuries-old anchor in a swim-through, flashlight fish at night and a sheer wall below.
6. Coral Sea · External Territory
Amazing (Holmes Reef)
A shallow wall riddled with soft-coral-lined archways, swim-throughs and caves where sharks rest.
7. Christmas Island · External Territory
Coconut Point
The island's classic drift: swirling currents, eel gardens, gorgonians and a chance of hammerheads, ten minutes from the jetty.
8. Christmas Island · External Territory
Eidsvold Wreck
WWII history in 5–18 m: the broken-up Norwegian freighter Eidsvold, torpedoed in Flying Fish Cove in 1942, now overgrown with hard coral.
9. Coral Sea · External Territory
False Entrance (Osprey Reef)
Spectacular bommies and blue-water swim-throughs in a blind gully, with schooling trevally and barracuda and dense grey reef shark aggregations.
10. Christmas Island · External Territory
Million Dollar Bommie
A solitary coral bommie rising from sand, with a dense garden eel colony and outstanding photography on the summit.
11. Coral Sea · External Territory
MV Antonio Tarabocchia wreck
Engine block, propeller and scattered hull of a 1961 Italian freighter on coral terraces in very clear water, with a resident potato cod.
12. Coral Sea · External Territory
Nonki Bommie (Holmes Reef)
A split pinnacle with a canyon between its two fingers, draped in giant sea fans and soft corals.
13. Coral Sea · External Territory
North Horn (Osprey Reef)
The Coral Sea's signature shark dive on a seamount wall.
14. Coral Sea · External Territory
North Horn Wall (Osprey Reef)
A sheer drift along a wall dropping more than 1,000 m, with caves, overhangs, mantas and tuna.
15. Christmas Island · External Territory
Perpendicular Wall
A true vertical wall into the abyss at the island's north-western tip, with colourful fans, schooling fish and a real chance of sharks, mantas and whale sharks.
16. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Phaeton Wreck
An 1868 composite barque burnt and run aground in 1889, its iron-framed bow and midships still upright in 4 m – snorkel through the skeleton of a ship.
17. Christmas Island · External Territory
Rhoda Wall
Coral slope, sheer wall and a quarry-like ramp, with schooling grey reef sharks and some of the island's closest whale shark encounters.
18. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Rose Wall
A continuous sheet of rose-coloured hard coral covering the wall from about 16 m to 35–40 m, right beside Cabbage Patch.
19. Christmas Island · External Territory
Thundercliff Cave
Swim into the cliff and surface inside air-filled chambers decorated with stalactites – reef, wall and cave in one dive.
20. Christmas Island · External Territory
West White Beach
Shallow coral reef with anemone fields off a remote rainforest beach, where whale sharks and dolphins are regular visitors.
21. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Catalina JX435 Wreck
Engines, propellers and a 600 m debris trail from a RAF Catalina that crashed landing in June 1945 – a shallow dive and a war grave.
22. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
Garden of Eden
A forest of gorgonian sea fans rising like trees from 20–28 m, with schools of big-eye trevally – dived only when the wind drops in summer.
23. Cocos (Keeling) Islands · External Territory
SMS Emden wreck site
Propellers, shafts, engine parts and shells of the WWI raider SMS Emden, beached after the 1914 Battle of Cocos – one of the most historic and least-visited wreck sites in Australia.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good wide-angle site?
Visibility above 20 m, something large to frame (a wreck, a wall, a shark) and light: shallow tropical reefs at midday or temperate sites on a winter high-pressure day.
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