Floreat Beach

Floreat is the beach you come to when you want the Perth coast without the crowd around it. It sits in the green western suburbs just north of City Beach, a wide sweep of soft gold sand behind low vegetated dunes, and where Cottesloe pictures a pavilion and a packed terrace, Floreat pictures almost nobody. That is the whole appeal for a traveller who has come to slow down. Arrive at first light and the beach is yours and a handful of swimmers and walkers, the water is at its glassiest, the air is cool and clean, and the only sound is the small swell folding onto an empty shore.

The early swim is the real gift here, and Floreat is one of the most restorative places in the city to take it. On a settled autumn or spring morning the open sea is clear and unhurried, the sand is freshly washed and wide, and because the beach is patrolled in season you can swim with the reassurance of the flags rather than reading a remote and unwatched coast. Float out past the gentle break, turn back toward the dunes catching the early light, and then carry a coffee from the kiosk to a patch of grass on the foreshore. It is a quiet, unhurried morning of the kind the busier beaches simply cannot offer once the sun is up.

Now the honest part. Floreat is calm in mood, not in physics. This is open Indian Ocean, west facing and exposed, so while it is far quieter than Cottesloe or Scarborough it is not a sheltered swim. From late morning through summer the afternoon sea breeze pushes in and roughens the water, and on a hot weekend the car park fills and the foreshore lawns gather families, though it never reaches the density of the headline beaches. If you arrive at noon in January hoping for a flat, sheltered float, the breeze will have other plans.

Who should come: anyone who wants a calm, uncrowded, well kept beach and is happy to take it early. Who should look elsewhere for a truly sheltered swim: go north to the reef pool at Mettams Pool for a real float at any hour, to the reef softened water at City Beach just south for more facilities, or up the coast where the offshore reef calms the sea. For pure stillness over a scene, Floreat at dawn is one of the honest picks on this coast.

Floreat sits about fifteen to twenty minutes by road west of central Perth, reached along The Boulevard through the leafy western suburbs to a large car park tucked behind the dunes. A bus service runs to the area, but a car is the simplest way to arrive at dawn before the foreshore fills on a warm day, and the car park is generous enough that even a busy summer morning rarely turns into the slow circling hunt you find at Cottesloe.

Plan your swim for the early morning before the sea breeze arrives, and bring or hire shade, because natural cover on the open sand is limited beyond the grassed foreshore. Showers, toilets and the kiosk sit behind the beach, with a playground and barbecues for a longer family stay. Swim between the patrol flags, keep an eye on the conditions through the day, and remember the sea here is typical and never guaranteed.