Cottesloe Beach

Cottesloe is on the Indian Ocean coast between Perth and Fremantle, reached by a suburban train line. It is a kilometre and a half of white quartz sand with a Norfolk Island pine terrace behind it and the Indiana teahouse, a 1996 building on the site of a 1910 bathing pavilion, at its centre.

The aspect is the whole thing. Western Australia's coast faces due west, and Cottesloe's sunsets run straight out over the ocean with the next landfall at Madagascar. Perth is among the most isolated major cities in the world — Adelaide is two thousand kilometres away — and the beach functions as the city's evening room in a way that is hard to overstate: people come after work in numbers, all year.

The water is warmer than the Southern Ocean beaches further south, the Leeuwin Current running warm water down this coast, and the swimming is generally straightforward with a groyne at the northern end. Sharks are present — Western Australia has a higher rate of fatal incidents than most coasts, and the state runs a tagged-shark notification system that beaches use to close. The Fremantle Doctor, a sea breeze that arrives most summer afternoons, is named and forecast and is the reason Perth is bearable in February.

Sculpture by the Sea has been held on the sand each March since 2005 and is the largest free public sculpture exhibition in Australia. Rottnest Island, half an hour offshore by ferry, has the quokkas and the bays; Scarborough and Trigg north of Cottesloe have the surf.

Perth comes here after work, all year, and the reason is the aspect — due west, with nothing between this sand and Madagascar. The water is warm for the latitude because the Leeuwin Current brings it down. Sharks are a real consideration on this coast and the state's alert system closes beaches; check it rather than assume.