What are the best Australian beaches for wildlife?

The best Australian beaches for wildlife include Tangalooma Beach on Moreton Island, Pebbly Beach near Batemans Bay and Mon Repos Beach near Bundaberg.

There are several Australian beaches where you can have extraordinary wildlife encounters. Pick the right spot and you can feed wild dolphins or hang out with kangaroos.

Best Australian beaches for wildlife: Camels

Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia, is famed for both its giant tides and its camels. Several outfits offer camel rides along the sand, with Red Sun Camels a long-standing favourite. Take the sunset ride for the most magical experience. You can also ride camels on the beach in New South Wales – at Birubi Beach in Port Stephens and Lighthouse Beach in Port Macquarie.

Broome Cable Beach camel ride at sunset — Sunset camel rides along Cable Beach are a Broome tradition. But first you need to undertake the long drive from Perth to Broome. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Best Australian beaches for wildlife: Dolphins

There are several Australian beaches where you’ve got a good chance of seeing dolphins frolicking around offshore. But there are two in particular where the dolphins come up to be fed. Tangalooma Beach on Moreton Island, Queensland – get there on the Tangalooma ferry from Brisbane – is one. Monkey Mia Beach in Monkey Mia, Shark Bay is the Western Australian option.

Feed dolphins in Western Australia at Monkey Mia in Shark Bay. Be warned – you’ll not be doing it alone. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Australian beaches with kangaroos

Kangaroos usually like grassy fields, but they’re not averse to hopping along the sand in quiet coastal locations. Favoured spots include Lucky Bay near Esperance in Western Australia, Emerald Beach near Coffs Harbour in New South Wales and Cape Hillsborough Beach near Mackay in Queensland.

kangaroo on the beach at Cape Hillsborough, near Mackay in Queensland — The best place to see kangaroos on the beach in Queensland is Cape Hillsborough, between Mackay and Airlie Beach. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Perhaps the most famous kangaroo beach in Australia, however, is Pebbly Beach in New South Wales. It’s inside the Murramarang National Park near Batemans Bay. The best way to see the kangaroos is staying at the Pebbly Beach campground and watching them at their most active around dawn and dusk.

Australian beaches with penguins

The Summerland Peninsula on Phillip Island, Victoria, is the most famous place to see penguins in Australia. Every night at the Penguin Parade, dozens of little penguins waddle in from the sea towards their nests. But you can also see some at St Kilda Beach in Melbourne and numerous beaches in northern Tasmania. Lilico Beach in Devonport is always a good shout on the penguin front.

Penguins coming home on the Phillip Island Penguin Parade near Melbourne — The Phillip Island Penguin Parade is one of the best day trips from Melbourne, Victoria.

Other great Australian beaches for wildlife

There are hundreds of spots with great snorkelling straight off the beach along the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef. But there are also some good option outside of the tropics. Clovelly Beach in Sydney is probably the best urban beach in Australia for snorkelling. At Portsea Beach on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula you can go swimming with sea dragons. And there are several beaches on Rottnest Island near Perth where there’s plenty of aquatic life offshore. Little Parakeet Bay is arguably the prettiest of these – and there’s the added bonus of little quokkas scuffling around, to..

quokka on Rottnest Island in Western Australia — The quokkas on Rottnest Island near Perth are easy to spot. But you might need patience to get that quokka selfie. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Meanwhile, the Hamelin Bay end of Boranup Beach in Western Australia’s Margaret River region is famous for its placid stingrays in the shallows. And Long Beach in Coffin Bay, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, is notorious for its strutting emus.

Mon Repos Beach near Bundaberg in Queensland, meanwhile, is a massively popular turtle nesting site. You can watch the turtles lay their eggs at the right time of year.