To get to Dutchies beach head down Church St from the Nelson’s Bay roundabout and then turn left into Thurlow Ave and follow it down to the carpark at the end of Christmas Bush Ave. There is usually parking at the beach all day in winter, but praking is hard to get after 10am on weekends and over the summer holidays. There are BBQ facilities, a toilet block, and a nice safe swimming beach for families. Dutchies beach is often used as the end point for drift dives from Fly Point, with mixed success. However Dutchies can provide an interesting dive when the conditions are right, which is on a high tide during a period when visibility in the bay is good. Diving the beach requires a long swim across a shallow bed of seagrass (~100m). The bottom then drops away to around 5m with a continuous wall about 1m high harbouring a wide range of marine creatures. The wall itself is very interesting as it is made of coal, and it is therefore extremely soft, porous, and light. Boulders the size of a fridge can be picked up and moved around if you have a mind to, and the wall is very fragile with large lumps breaking off if it is carelessly kicked or leant against. Because the wall is so soft it has numerous undercuts created by the currents at the site. These harbour moray eels, wobbegongs sharks, lots of Sydney cardinal fish, nudibranchs, and over summer tropical crayfish seem to frequent the area. If you swim along the wall to the East and then head outward you will find an extensive area of soft corals and sponges, in depths of around 10m, very similar to the gardens at the Pipeline. This area seems to have uncommonly large numbers of umbrella shells. The soft corals also harbour cowries, crabs and pipefish. For the very fit diver Red Patch rocks is about 300m straight offshore from the beach under the isolated dange marker. I have only tried to get out to this area once. The bottom drops away to sand at 15m before rising up through a patch of soft corals to the rocks. However very strong currents rip through here and Redpatch Rocks is probably best done as a boat dive.