Wharariki Beach is a

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

on the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abe ...

, west of Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. The north-facing sandy beach is accessible only via a 21-minute walking track from the end of Wharariki Road. The road end is approximately from the nearest settlement, the small village of

Pūponga The tiny settlement of Pūponga in New Zealand is the northernmost settlement in the South Island. It is in the Tasman District, north of Collingwood, at the foot of Farewell Spit Farewell Spit ( mi, Onetahua) is a narrow sand spit at the ...

. A camping ground is located along Wharariki Road, but the area surrounding the beach is devoid of any development. Wharariki Beach is bordered by Puponga Farm Park, with the wider area more or less surrounded by the northern end of

Kahurangi National Park Kahurangi National Park in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand is the second largest of the thirteen national parks of New Zealand. It was gazetted in 1996 and covers , ranging to near Golden Bay in the north. Much of what was the ...

. The beach is flanked to the east and west by cliffs, but due to the flat topography of the area behind it, the beach area and the grassy dunes behind it are quite exposed to winds. Wharariki Beach is perhaps best known for the Archway Islands, featured frequently in photos in New Zealand landscape calendars. It is also the default lock screen image and one of the desktop wallpapers on Microsoft's

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

operating system.

Archway Islands

The Archway Islands are a group of four rock stacks or small islands, with even the largest one of them measuring only about . The largest of the islands is closest to the mainland and adjoins Wharariki Beach; it is generally not cut off by the sea. The second island lies about offshore and is relatively flat and vegetated. The remaining two islands are typical rock stacks, with the larger one tall and containing two natural rock arches, giving rise to the naming of the group of islands.

References

{{Tasman District Beaches of the Tasman District