Qualla: Great Australian Bight Marine Park

Great Australian Bight Marine Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0. Picture the great curving bite that the Southern Ocean takes out of the underside of Australia, a coastline so remote that for most of its length the only thing standing between the plain and the sea is a hundred metres of cliff. The waters within that curve make up the Great Australian Bight Marine Park, one of the most extraordinary stretches of ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. There is exactly one place to reach it by land, a single viewing platform at the Head of the Bight. Everywhere else, the park belongs to the whales, the sea lions, and the cold, clean current. To visit by boat is to enter genuine wilderness; to stand at the cliff edge and look down is to watch that wilderness from above.

Image: Nachoman-au | CC BY-SA 3.0

Great Australian Bight Marine Park: The Calving Ground

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Holly Randell, CC BY-SA 4.0. Each winter, southern right whales make the Bight one of the most important nurseries on the planet. They come up from the Antarctic to the sheltered water at the Head of the Bight to give birth and to breed, gathering in numbers that can be hard to believe. Through the season, f...

Image: Holly Randell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Australian Bight Marine Park: A Wilder Cast

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Виктор В, CC BY-SA 3.0. The whales share these waters with Australian sea lions, one of the rarest sea lions in the world, which haul out on ledges and beaches tucked along the base of the cliffs. For years they were almost impossible to see, hidden a hundred metres below the clifftops, until camera dro...

Image: Виктор В | CC BY-SA 3.0

Great Australian Bight Marine Park: Layers of Protection

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HeyJude70, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park's history is a patchwork of expanding care for these waters. The first Europeans to skirt this coast sailed in 1627 on the Dutch vessel Gulden Zeepaert, commanded by François Thijssen and carrying the senior VOC official Pieter Nuyts, for whom the land was named; and lat...

Image: HeyJude70 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Australian Bight Marine Park: The Bight That Was Won

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Holly Randell, CC BY-SA 4.0. Protection on paper has not gone untested. In recent years, the deep water of the Bight became the target of proposals to drill for oil far offshore, in seas as rough as any on Earth. One company's own worst-case modelling described a blowout spilling tens of thousands of barrels...

Image: Holly Randell | CC BY-SA 4.0