Iconic Cottesloe beach swamped by seaweed after storms lash Perth

The iconic white sand of Cottesloe Beach has been replaced with thick mounds of seaweed, after a series of storms lashed WA last week.

A ‘once-in-a-decade’ storm on Monday brought with it seas and swell of more than eight metres and was the first of several storms to hit WA’s south west coast during the last week of May.

“Any time there’s a strong cold front, you often do see a lot of seaweed on the shore,” Angus Moore from the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Despite the cold weather and seaweed obstacles, some avid swimmers waded through the brown mounds to get in the water on Monday.

Elliot and Ruby Badcock spent more than two hours playing in the seaweed this morning. It was the first time the Shenton Park siblings had seen Cottesloe Beach as the family only moved to Perth from Sydney a few months ago.

“Elliot announced that this was the best beach ever,” their dad Nick Badcock said.

Mr Badcock said they were more excited to see the seaweed than the sand, and probably will be disappointed the next time they go to the beach.

“We were pretty impressed, there were these mountains of seaweed, just cliffs jutting off into the ocean. They immediately leapt on them, they threw off their shoes with reckless abandonment, which I had to pick up,” he said.

“They were disappointed they didn’t have their bathers on.”

“It smelled really salty,” eight-year-old Elliot said.