
Greens Pool is a sandy white beach with boulders on the south coast of
Western Australia between
Denmark and
Walpole.
This sheltered area is part of
William Bay National Park and has a sandy white beach ringed by large
granite boulders that prevent the swell of the
Southern Ocean reaching the shoreline.
The pool is roughly long from east to west and at its widest point from the beach to the protective rocks.
Early settlers of the region used the beach location for outings and picnics.
The area has a car park, viewing platform and toilet facility with a reasonably steep sandy path down to the beach.
The granitic rocks along much of the south coast formed 1.5 billion years ago, placing them among some of the oldest rocks in the world.
As the
Australian continent collided with
Antarctica, the rocks along the south coast became part of the
Albany-Fraser Orogen, and 600 million years ago the area was a massive mountain range. The mountains eroded away long ago and the remaining rocks were once deep down in the base of the range. The high pressures and temperatures these rocks experienced during the mountain building event caused them to melt then recrystallise, forming granitic
gneisses and migmatites, which are referred to as granites.
[
The pool is a popular tourist attraction within the National Park; in 1993-1994 the park had 110,000 visitors, and in 2011-2012 the park had some 218,105 visitors.] In 2020, Greens Pool was ranked 13 in TripAdvisor's Top 25 Beaches in the South Pacific
Greens Pool was named to honour Police Inspector John Green, who was originally a farmer in Denmark. His son, Victor Green, drowned in nearby Wilson Inlet in 1922, and often used to fish at the pool. It was originally known as Green's Pool but the Lands Department dropped the apostrophe for many place names although the letter "s" was retained. Robert Byleveld constructed the first track to Greens Pool in the early 1920s when most of William Bay was inaccessible and visited infrequently.[
Many species of fish inhabit the area, including; estuary cobbler, southern garfish, species of flathead, ]southern blue devil
The southern blue devil (''Paraplesiops meleagris'') is a species of fish in the longfin family Plesiopidae endemic to southern Australia. It is a close relative of the eastern blue devil (''Paraplesiops bleekeri''), which lives in the coastal w ...
, King George whiting, skipjack trevally
The skipjack trevally (''Pseudocaranx wright'') or sand trevally is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Carangidae, the jacks, trevallies, pompanos, and scads. It is found in the eastern Indian Ocean around Australia.
Description
The skip ...
and Australian herring.
References
{{coord, 35, 1, 27, S, 117, 14, 6, E, display=title, region:AU_type:isle_source:GNS-enwiki
Great Southern (Western Australia)
South coast of Western Australia
Beaches of Western Australia