Dobroyd Head
Dobroyd Head, Sydney Harbour: a dive map from Forty Baskets and Reef Beach, with the entry points and a 3.2 km scooter route.
Sponge gardens along the southern half of the head, reached either by a long walk to Reef Beach or by scooter from Forty Baskets. GPS positions are WGS84 throughout.
The Dobroyd Head map
The Reef Beach entry in detail, courtesy of Justin Ashworth
Ferries, and long stretches with no way out
The Manly ferry passes close and at full power — you will hear it. The scooter routes below include long segments with no shore access, the nearest being Reef Beach.
Visibility here is often poor. As you approach the lower part of the harbour there is frequently a layer of heavy particles a few metres thick sitting on the bottom; I have dived it at 2 m of visibility, which makes compass navigation to a small target close to hopeless.
By scooter, from Forty Baskets
In July 2021 I explored the head from Forty Baskets Beach, reaching the southernmost point of the reef on the map — a 3,200 m round trip on a 15 L tank over two hours.
The commute to Reef Beach is unmemorable, so I snorkelled it on the surface to save air. Turn south, and after 200 m the landscape changes as the sponges thicken, with walls and boulders worth exploring. The sponge gardens widen towards the southern end, where the reef runs well past the cliff corner you can see from the surface. On the way back I surface-snorkelled from Reef Beach again, close to the coast, for safety.
A few days later I came at it from the south to finish the survey: in at Castle Rock Beach, surface swim to Grotto Point, then north-east. I reached the reef at Crater Cove as planned but turned back short of joining the northern route, unsure of the scooter battery — so that section of the map is incomplete. 3,800 m that time, and I found a small wreck, another angelshark, two crested horn sharks and a lot of good sponge.
From shore — and it is hard
Enter at Forty Baskets and turn right and the coast is dull: kelp for the first four metres, then sand. Sand still holds things, though — a hammer octopus the size of a blue-lined one in September 2020, and seahorses near the beach, where a colony was apparently relocated when a bath net came out.
The better option is to skip that stretch entirely: park on Beatty Street, walk down to Forty Baskets, then take the coastal path 700 m to Reef Beach. It is mostly flat. It is also a long way with tanks and gear — I did it at night in October 2020 in a drysuit carrying a heavy camera. Tiring, but doable.
Reef Beach itself is worth the walk, and especially the look back into the bay at the end of the dive. I still remember the lights of Manly and the Quarantine Station on flat water in complete silence.
In the water at Reef Beach, go right. It starts unpromising — bare boulders, sea urchins, the odd sea tulip, not much fish — and improves markedly as you head south and the sandline drops to 10–12 m. There the boulders carry growth and sponges of every colour: many stonefish, a moray, and one solitary female Port Jackson enjoying a night without being chased by males. Four abandoned anchors wedged in the cracks.
The speedboat off Forty Baskets
A navigation exercise more than a wreck dive. It sits 200 m off the coast between Forty Baskets and Reef Beach, which makes underwater compass work unlikely to find it.
My solution was to dive at night and use the submersible GPS described here to surface-swim to the exact position from Navionics — 420 m from Forty Baskets.
Once on top of it I descended to 12 m, and the visibility was so bad that I hit the bottom as it appeared. The wreck was three metres from where I landed. I moved two metres away to avoid stirring the sediment while setting up the strobes, looked up, and it was gone. It took ten minutes of search patterns to find it again.
It is a 6 m speedboat — not the Titanic — but as a test of whether the method works, it worked very well. I would use it any time you need to start a dive at a specific position, and it would suit freedivers looking for something at known coordinates. Not much life on the sand around it, beyond one very cute 25 cm Port Jackson.
Around the head
An angelshark — not a common sight in Sydney
The outboard engine, mapped
Blue-and-yellow fusilier
A school of kingfish
A banded wobbegong
The 5 m wreck
The outboard engine near the boat
Crested horn shark
Australian angelshark, Squatina australis
A juvenile hammer octopus, and a finger for scale
Sponge garden
One of the many anchors
