State of the Beaches is Beach Day API's weekly look at recently refreshed records, focused on signals that product teams can use in the coming week. This edition compares four Australian records refreshed on September 14, 2026 and retrieved from the live API the same day. The comparison set spans Tasmania, Queensland, the Northern Territory, and New South Wales.
Four regions, four different condition profiles
The current records show why a beach product needs more than a single temperature field. Cullen Beach in the Northern Territory returned the warmest water and air values in this set. Bellerive Beach in Tasmania returned the coolest water and air values, with the strongest wind. Tallebudgera Beach combined warmer water with larger waves, while Bondi Beach paired a moderate water temperature with the highest score in the set.
| Beach | Region | Air | Water | Wind | Wave height | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cullen Beach | Northern Territory | 80°F | 84°F | 19.0 mph | 0.5 ft | 75 |
| Bondi Beach | New South Wales | 63.7°F | 64.2°F | 25.7 mph | 2.8 ft | 82 |
| Tallebudgera Beach | Queensland | 56°F | 69°F | 16.1 mph | 3.1 ft | 60 |
| Bellerive Beach | Tasmania | 48°F | 53°F | 26.8 mph | 0.5 ft | 65 |
What the current conditions mean for product teams
The four records are not a ranking of Australian beaches and do not support safety advice. They are a compact example of how a destination, rental, tourism, or travel product can render several condition dimensions together.
- Temperature: Cullen Beach's 84°F water temperature is materially different from Bellerive Beach's 53°F. A product that only displays air temperature would hide that distinction.
- Wind and waves: Bondi Beach returned 25.7 mph wind and 2.8 ft waves. Tallebudgera returned a lower wind value but a 3.1 ft wave height. Those are separate fields and should remain separate in a user interface.
- Conditions date: each selected conditions response is dated September 14. Weekly digests and destination pages should display that date with the values rather than presenting them as timeless beach attributes.
- Score context: the Beach Day Score is a product field that can support sorting or a quick comparison. It should not replace the underlying weather and ocean fields.
A useful API pattern for a weekly beach report
A developer can fetch the beach profile and then read the dated conditions response for the same record:
GET /v1/beaches/{id}/
GET /v1/beaches/{id}/conditions/Keep weather and ocean-condition fields distinct in your application schema. Store the conditions date beside the values, handle null water-quality fields explicitly, and avoid turning a missing field into a negative observation. The Beach Day API documentation has the endpoint reference, and the coverage page helps technical teams evaluate the dataset for their product.
Data notes
Observation window: Sunday September 13, 2026 at 00:00 through Monday September 14, 2026 at the article run, Pacific time. Retrieval date: September 14, 2026. Scope: four recently refreshed Australian beach records, not all beaches in Australia or worldwide. Weather and ocean-condition values are reported as returned fields. Water quality was null for the three OSM-derived comparison records and was not interpreted as a negative finding. Bondi's water-quality field was not used in the weather and ocean comparison. This report does not provide safety advice.