Sorrento Beach

Sorrento is the northern suburbs at their most easeful, a soft golden beach below a grassed foreshore with the surf club at its heart and the masts of Hillarys Boat Harbour just to the south. For a traveller who has come to slow down it is one of the gentlest choices on the Perth coast, calmer in both water and mood than the famous western beaches, and the kind of place where a morning unwinds rather than fills up. Arrive at first light and the sand belongs to the early swimmers and the walkers, the sea lies soft and clear, and the air is cool and still before the day warms.

The early swim is the reward here, and Sorrento makes it an easy one. On a settled autumn or spring morning the water is soft and unhurried and shelves slowly from the shore, and because the beach is patrolled in season you can swim with the reassurance of the flags rather than reading an unwatched coast. Float out past the small break, turn back toward the grassed foreshore catching the early light, and then carry a coffee from the kiosk to a bench above the sand. If you want the calm taken further, the man made beach inside Hillarys Boat Harbour a short walk south is the most sheltered water in the area, lovely for a gentle float and an easy paddle.

Now the honest part. Sorrento is gentle, not glassy all day. This is still the open Indian Ocean, so while it is softer than Cottesloe or Scarborough it is not a flat lagoon, and from late morning through summer the afternoon sea breeze pushes in and roughens the surface just as the foreshore gathers families and the quay fills with lunch crowds. The harbour precinct next door can feel busy and commercial at peak times rather than restful. If it is pure stillness you are chasing in the middle of a hot day, the open beach will not give it.

Who should come: anyone who wants a calm, easy going swim with good facilities and the option of the sheltered harbour, taken early. Who should look elsewhere for the deepest calm: step into the protected harbour beach at Hillarys, go south to the reef pool at Mettams Pool for a true float at any hour, or down to the reef softened water at North Beach, the calmest swim on this coast.

Sorrento sits about twenty five to thirty minutes by road north of central Perth in the northern coastal suburbs, with parking along the foreshore and around Hillarys Boat Harbour just to the south. A bus service runs to the area, but a car is the simplest way to arrive at dawn before the foreshore and the quay fill on a warm day, and there is more room here than at the headline western beaches.

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, the kiosk and the surf club sit behind the beach, with the Sorrento Quay precinct and the protected harbour beach a short walk for food and calmer water. Swim between the patrol flags, keep an eye on the conditions through the day, and remember the sea here is typical and never guaranteed.