Learn More
On the pages below you can find out all you need to know about Cockburn Sound and threats to its future. If the answer to questions you may have, isn’t on this page, please feel free to contact us. Also, if there is additional information you may have access to about Cockburn Sound and/or planned developments for it, please share it with us and we will consider including it on these pages or as a news item.
THE Government’s planned westport container port
The map below shows the plans for the new container port in Kwinana and the location of the 10km-long 18-metre deep shipping channel through the Sound’s heart that will be needed to allow the mega-tankers to get in and out of the port.
More developments for the Sound in the pipeline
Since the late 1960s, Cockburn Sound’s unique environment has come under a wide range of pressures as the result of increasing industrialisation. Just some of the environmental stressors the Sound endures include concentrated brine outflow from the desalination plant, ongoing dredging for cement production, contaminated land and groundwater input, nutrient discharges flow restriction caused by the Causeway and coastal modification.
The Cockburn Sound environment
Cockburn Sound is a sheltered marine embayment south of the Swan River mouth at Fremantle. It is 22km long and ranges from 15km wide in the north to 9km in the south with an area of about 124 square-kilometres. Its central basin is between 17-22m deep, flanked by the relatively steep slopes of the surrounding banks. Garden Island extends along the western side of the Sound providing protection from prevailing winds and ocean swells.
Recreational Activities in the sound
Cockburn Sound provides a fantastic, safe place for the metro community to enjoy a wide range of recreational activities good for fun with family and mates, physical fitness, general well-being and mental health!
