Direction Island's best beach had no name at all until 2017, when a national survey crowned it Australia's finest and christened it Cossies Beach, after the governor-general of the day, Peter Cosgrove. The 300-metre curve of sand sits on an uninhabited islet in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory of 27 coral islands some 2,750 kilometres northwest of Perth, closer to Java than to any Australian city. Its other attraction is a current. Where the reef pinches between Direction Island and neighbouring Prison Island, the rising tide forces open Indian Ocean water through a narrow gap called The Rip. The channel runs like a river into the lagoon, carrying blacktip reef sharks, trevally and green turtles in with it. On 9 November 1914 the German raider Emden put fifty men ashore here to wreck the telegraph station that was then the only reason anyone lived on the islet. The operator's distress call got out first, HMAS Sydney answered it, and the Emden was shot to a wreck.
Reaching it is simple: a public ferry crosses from West Island and Home Island twice a week. Most visitors go straight to The Rip and swim it with the incoming tide, drifting over the drop-off while the current does the work and reef sharks hold station below, until the channel spits them into the shallow lagoon. Ashore, the only structures are thatched pondok shelters, wood-fired barbecues and a heritage trail through the coconut palms. Near the anchorage, palm trunks are shingled with painted driftwood boards left by visiting yacht crews: this is the only anchorage in the Cocos, and the first landfall on the Indian Ocean crossing. The atoll now lies inside a marine park, and the island stays empty; everyone leaves again on the afternoon boat.