The Patches

Reef Dive | Boat access

Depth: 4 m (13 ft) to 6 m (20 ft)

Level: Open Water and beyond.

The Patches are a series of boulder reefs and ridges suitable for boat diving, off the entrance to the Moyne River, in Port Fairy Bay on Victoria's Shipwreck Coast.

Diving and Snorkelling at The Patches

The sandy bottom of Port Fairy Bay has an extensive network of these rocky reefs.

Dives on The Patches, near Port Fairy Lighthouse, provide a lot of small marine life to see.

Location: Port Fairy, Victoria 3284

Ideal Conditions: While the area is well protected and often diveable when many other sites are too rough, diving The Patches requires calm conditions and a very low swell. See WillyWeather (Port Fairy Bay) as a guide for the tide times and the height of the tide.

Boat Launching: While some head out from shore, we think The Patches are best dived from a dive boat which can be launched at the Port Fairy, Griffiths Street Boat Ramp.

Eastern Maar country

Traditional Owners — This dive site is in the traditional Country of the Eastern Maar people of south-western Victoria between the Shaw and Eumerella Rivers and from Yambuk in the south to beyond Lake Linlithgow in the north. This truly ancient Country extends as far north as Ararat and encompasses the coastal townships of Port Fairy in the west, Warrnambool, Peterborough, Port Campbell, Apollo Bay, Lorne, and Airies Inlet in the east, including the Great Ocean Road area. It also stretches 100 metres out to sea from low tide and therefore includes the iconic Twelve Apostles. "Eastern Maar" is a name adopted by the people who identify as Maar, Eastern Gunditjmara, Tjap Wurrung, Peek Whurrong, Kirrae Whurrung, Kuurn Kopan Noot and/or Yarro waetch (Tooram Tribe) amongst others. We wish to acknowledge the Eastern Maar as Traditional Owners. We pay respect to their Ancestors and their Elders, past, present and emerging.

 

The Patches Location Map

Latitude: 38° 23.197′ S   (38.386622° S / 38° 23′ 11.84″ S)
Longitude: 142° 15.227′ E   (142.25378° E / 142° 15′ 13.61″ E)
Datum: WGS84 | Google Map
Added: 2021-07-03 09:32:50 GMT, Last updated: 2022-05-24 16:57:06 GMT
Source: GPS (verified)
Nearest Neighbour: Port Fairy Lighthouse, 358 m, bearing 155°, SSE
Port Fairy Bay, Shipwreck Coast.
Depth: 4 to 6 m.

DISCLAIMER: No claim is made by The Scuba Doctor as to the accuracy of the dive site coordinates listed here. Should anyone decide to use these GPS marks to locate and dive on a site, they do so entirely at their own risk. Always verify against other sources.

The marks come from numerous sources including commercial operators, independent dive clubs, reference works, and active divers. Some are known to be accurate, while others may not be. Some GPS marks may even have come from maps using the AGD66 datum, and thus may need be converted to the WGS84 datum. To distinguish between the possible accuracy of the dive site marks, we've tried to give each mark a source of GPS, Google Earth, or unknown.