Church Grounds
Shellharbour, Illawarra, New South Wales, Australia
A boat-access reef off Shellharbour Harbour, north of Bass Point, named after a church once used as a shore transit to find it. The reef top sits at 21 to 23 m with sand at 26 m, cut by north-west to south-east gutters with overhangs, boulders and the thick rope, chain and railway sleepers of an old mooring. Thousands of yellowtail and pomfret, wobbegongs and blue devilfish on the one documented 2026 dive.
Church Grounds is a boat-access reef about 2.25 km north-east of the Shell Cove boat ramp, roughly east of the old ramp inside Shellharbour Harbour and north of Bass Point; it takes its name from a church that was used as a shore transit to locate it. The reef top sits at 21 to 23 m with sand at about 26 m and is cut by a series of north-west to south-east gutters with small overhangs, boulder piles and cracks, plus a length of very thick rope, chain and railway sleepers left from an old vessel mooring. It is an anchor dive on open reef with no mooring, and the depth limits bottom time to roughly 15 to 20 minutes on air, so nitrox is recommended. Reported as more protected than the Hump Wall sites on the same day. On the documented February 2026 dive it held thousands of yellowtail and ladder-finned pomfret, two wobbegongs, comb wrasse and two eastern blue devilfish over sponge, sea squirt and small gorgonian walls in 12 to 15 m visibility at 21.5 C. Coordinates are from Michael McFadyen (single source, accepted by the owner 2026-09-09); a 2010 Shellharbour Scuba Centre log corroborates the site and its 26 m depth.
Marine life
- Yellowtail
- Ladder-finned Pomfret
- Orectolobus
- Comb Wrasse
- Eastern Blue Devil
