Point Perpendicular

The site takes its name from the 100 m cliff it sits below, and it is not one dive but a few different ones spread along the headland. In the shallow water, around 10 m under the surface, there are schools of mullet, silver bream, sea sweep and long-finned pike. A number of boulders sit in the shallows here, smooth rather than broken, stacked so that they create caves and short swim-throughs you follow rather than swim across.

Swim down to 30 m and deeper and the reef changes, and so does the life on it: delicate pink and red gorgonia, purple sponges, hydroids and bryozoans, soft and hard southern corals with coloured tunicates. Grey nurse sharks are part of what the point is dived for, along with Port Jackson sharks and black reef leatherjackets. Because the range runs from 6 m to 35 m, the practical approach is to pick a band and stay in it: the shallow schooling water and the deep sponge rock are effectively two different dives sharing a headland.