WORTH A DETOUR

Australia · Broome, Western Australia · #4 of Australia's ten by fame

Cable Beach

Twenty-two kilometres of white sand, named after a phone line.

How we rated it: up one for a sourced find (it is named after the telegraph cable laid from Broome to Java in 1889). Nothing on record takes it down. Photo: lin padgham · CC BY 2.0

The hang

Cable Beach is named after the telegraph cable laid between Broome and Java in 1889. It is a 22 km stretch of white sand on the Indian Ocean, a five-minute drive or 30-minute walk from Broome town centre, and Time Out notes it was ranked third best in the world in TripAdvisor's 2023 awards. There are toilets, a picnic area, a café and a car park; 4WDs may drive on the sand from the northern end of the car park. Box jellyfish may be present from November to April, so take care swimming then. At that length, there is room to find a quiet spot even in the busy dry season. The stretch we measured is 5,682 metres of the 22 km.

The real intel

Best months · warmest sea: March (32.7 °C), then January and December. Coolest: July (21.8 °C). One year of data, 2025.
Best months · emptiest: Anywhere along it: at 22 km there is space even in the busy dry season.
Getting there: A five-minute drive or a 30-minute walk from Broome town centre.
The catch nobody tells you: Box jellyfish (stingers) may be present from November to April.

The year at Cable Beach

Warmest sea in March. Fewest wet days in June, July, August, September and October. Pick your fight.

Sea (°C)

32.1

31.3

32.7

30.3

25.8

23.4

21.8

23.1

25.2

29.2

30.3

31.5

Air (°C)

29.7

29.8

30.2

28.9

25.6

22.7

21.2

23.4

25.3

27.9

28.3

29.6

Sun (h/day)

9.5

10.5

10.9

10.4

10.6

11.2

11.6

12.8

11.3

Rain (days)

One year of data, 2025, from Open-Meteo at this beach's coordinates. A rain day is 1 mm or more. The red bar is the month to aim for in each row.

The neighbours

1 beach within 6 km, as the gull flies.

4.1 kmTown Beach - Guwarrigun349 m of beach, measured. Not rated yet.

Straight-line distances from the mapped beach shapes (OpenStreetMap). Roads are longer, and in Bali they are much longer.

The crowd

Busy in the dry season, and long enough not to matter.

The receipts

Toilets, a picnic area, a café and a car park; 4WD access at the northern end.

The facts · we measured

Length: 5,682 m
Mean width: 148.1 m
Area: 841,570 m²
Warmest sea (2025): 32.7 °C in Mar
Coldest sea (2025): 21.8 °C in Jul
Sea by month, °C: Jan 32.1 · Feb 31.3 · Mar 32.7 · Apr 30.3 · May 25.8 · Jun 23.4 · Jul 21.8 · Aug 23.1 · Sep 25.2 · Oct 29.2 · Nov 30.3 · Dec 31.5