Qualla: Steep Point

Steep Point: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethanwhite07, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand here at dusk and you are watching the last of Australia. Steep Point is the westernmost place on the entire mainland, a low headland of cliff and dune at the tip of the Edel Land peninsula, and the sun that drops into the Indian Ocean in front of you is the final sunset the continent will see that day. There is no road to this edge — only sand. The nearest sealed highway is two hundred kilometres east, and every traveller who reaches the point has earned it across soft dune tracks in a four-wheel drive, chasing the simple, irresistible idea of standing at the end of the land.

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Image: Ethanwhite07 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Steep Point: The Long Track West

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethanwhite07, CC BY-SA 4.0. Getting to Steep Point is half the point of going. The North West Coastal Highway, the last strip of bitumen, lies a full 200 kilometres to the east, and from there the route degrades into tracks that wind through sand dunes passable only by four-wheel drive. A permit is required...

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Image: Ethanwhite07 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Steep Point: The Day the Ocean Climbed the Cliff

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The sea here is not always content to stay below. On 17 July 2006, the largest tsunami ever recorded striking Australia surged up against Steep Point and was measured at 7.9 metres high — a wall of water that ran startlingly far up the land. It was born far away, off the coast of...

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Image: Public domain

Steep Point: Fourteen Days in an Icebox

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:JarrahTree, CC BY 2.5 au. No story binds itself to this coast like that of Jack Drinan. On 25 April 1963, the steel prawn trawler Nor 6 ran onto the Zuytdorp Cliffs just south of Steep Point on her maiden voyage from Fremantle. Three of her crew were lost. Drinan, her skipper, survived — but only by an or...

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Image: User:JarrahTree | CC BY 2.5 au

Steep Point: The Edge as a Landmark

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:JarrahTree, CC BY 2.5 au. Because it is the continent's outermost corner, Steep Point has become a kind of fixed mark that the rest of the coast is measured against. Old accounts locate nearby shipwrecks by their distance and bearing from the point; a 1994 booklet on the wrecks that litter this coast was ...

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Image: User:JarrahTree | CC BY 2.5 au