Every single person we’d spoken to since Exmouth told us the same thing about Turquoise Bay: don’t skip it, and get there before the day-trippers do. We’d started to assume it was one of those places where the hype outruns the reality. It isn’t. We stood at the top of the beach on our first morning and I genuinely thought something was wrong with my sunglasses — the water is that colour, all the time, not just in the photos.
What It Is
There’s no camping directly at Turquoise Bay itself — it’s a day-use area. The nearest campground is Mandu Mandu, about 4km south, which is where you base yourself for early beach access. We’d already stayed a couple of nights there earlier in the week and made the short drive over at first light, well ahead of the Exmouth day-tripper cars, and had a solid hour of near-empty beach before anyone else showed up.
The Drift Snorkel
This is the main event, and it’s genuinely one of the best short snorkels in Australia. Enter the water at the northern end of the bay, let the gentle current carry you south along the reef edge, exit at the beach, walk back up, repeat. We did it three times before breakfast — the fish life, coral, and the odd turtle cruising past made it worth every lap. Reef sharks are common here too, and by this stage of the trip the kids had gone from shrieking at the first one to barely glancing up from their masks.
Getting the Timing Right
Camp at Mandu Mandu, drive or walk the 4km to Turquoise Bay in the morning, and you get a genuine window of quiet before the day-visitor cars start arriving from Exmouth around mid-morning. We can’t stress this enough — the difference between an empty beach at 7am and a crowded car park by 11am is stark, and entirely a function of getting up early.
Gear Notes: What Earned Its Keep
Repeated in-and-out drift snorkelling means wet gear, sandy feet, and a lot of back-and-forth walking along the beach — a sand-free microfibre towel for each of us meant nobody was standing around dripping and shivering waiting for a shared towel to free up. Small logistics win that made the repeat-lap system actually work smoothly.
A decent snorkel set that actually fits properly matters more here than almost anywhere else we swam — a leaky mask on your first lap of the drift snorkel is a genuinely frustrating way to miss the best five minutes of your trip. Try them in a pool before you leave home if you can.
Practical Info
Location: Turquoise Bay (day-use), nearest camping at Mandu Mandu Creek Campground, Cape Range National Park Access: 4WD recommended Sites: ~25 unpowered at Mandu Mandu, 4km from the bay Facilities: Composting toilets at the campground, no water, no showers Fires: Not permitted Nearest town: Exmouth (60–65km) — Coles, fuel, good restaurants Book ahead: DBCA bookings open 3 months out, fill within hours — set an alarm
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We came from Osprey Bay. It’s a long way south from here before the next stop — several weeks and the entire Nullarbor between us and Bunda Cliffs.