Party Point

Meet the site

Party Point is the busiest single drop on Lonsdale Wall and the best introduction to what the Heads walls actually look like. It takes its name from the fact that a whole charter boat's worth of divers of different levels can be put on it together: the Scuba Doctor listing describes it as usable by Open Water divers to 18 m, Advanced divers to 30 m and technical divers to 45 m, and that layering is exactly how the site is structured.

The wall here is an almost vertical drop from a reef flat at about 12 m. Every 6–9 m down the face there is a step-out – a horizontal ledge – and behind each ledge the limestone has been eaten back into a huge overhang that a diver can swim right into. The first overhang sits at 18 m, the next at about 27 m, and so on down to the sand at 45 m. Each roof is a ceiling of yellow zoanthids, jewel anemones, orange and yellow sponges and soft corals, and the floor of each ledge is where the southern rock lobster sit in numbers. Southern blue devils are reliable in the deeper overhangs, and the open face carries old wives, boarfish, magpie perch and wrasse. Cuttlefish appear in winter and sevengill sharks off the wall in deeper water.

The layout makes it a good site for buddy pairs of unequal experience and for Advanced deep training, because there is always a shallower terrace directly above. It is also the reason for the site's main risk: the next ledge is always visible below, and descending 'just one more' takes a diver past 30 m very quickly. Both slacks are dived. The dive is short, colourful and busy, and for many Melbourne divers it is the first Heads wall they ever see.

What you might see

Southern blue devil, southern rock lobster, yellow zoanthids, jewel anemones, sponges, soft corals, old wife, longsnout boarfish, magpie perch, bluethroat wrasse, giant cuttlefish (winter), sharpnose sevengill shark

Location

Central Lonsdale Wall inside the Heads, 30 m east-north-east of The Mall and 70 m east of Paradise Wall.