Thompsons Beach

Australia's largest inland sand beach, on a slow bend of the Murray River

Thompsons Beach is the centrepiece of Cobram. The river takes a long lazy bend here and the slow water deposits a wide, gently sloping beach of pale sand — over 800 metres long, with red gums leaning out over the water at each end. In summer it could pass for a quiet coastal beach if it weren't for the gum smell and the cockatoos.

Facilities are good for a free public beach: shaded picnic tables, gas barbecues, toilets, a kiosk in peak season. The water is shallow well out and warms up enough to swim in from November to March. It gets busy on January weekends; weekdays in February are the sweet spot.

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Thompsons Beach is genuinely the largest inland sand beach on the Murray — over 800 metres of fine white sand built up by a slow inside curve of the river. The sand replenishes naturally each season as the river deposits new material, which is why the beach has stayed wide while many others along the river have eroded.