The City of Cockburn's flagship dog beach is named for the famous engineer who rode his horse into the surf at this very beach, and blew his brains out. The legacy of C.Y.O'Connor leaves two abiding questions;

1: "Given that he was alleged to have shot himself because he erroneously thought his master project to pump water from Perth to Kalgoorlie had failed, was the watery venue for his suicide, poetic, or simply coincidental?
And
2: "What happened to his horse?"

Team Gooddog made landfall at the Northern end of the beach, turning off Cockburn Rd at Rollinson Rd and following the sign to the beach.

This long beach is sectioned by groins, the most northerly stretch affording distant views of the marina and port. Garden Island is close off-shore and the vista is pleasant enough - just so long as walkers focus on anywhere other than the dune side of the beach. Here, the view is dominated by derelict factory buildings and recent construction projects. The dune wall is steep, with rocks and shale spilling down the slope on to the beach. This unsightly and potentially dangerous situation is aesthetically aggravated by the relatively narrow breadth of the beach.

To the South, however, the industrial aspects are left behind (although on the morning of our review a pall of oily black smoke rose like a mushroom cloud from Garden Island). Then, at the extreme Southern end, the old Fremantle power station rises from the dunes in a phoenix-like apparition, the decaying nature of its classically proportioned architecture only becoming apparent at close range.

The southern access path crosses a green swath of well kept lawn with modern picnic and barbeque areas before continuing on past a toilet block to a generous car park.

C.Y.O'Connor beach can perhaps best be described as "a beach in process" (at the southern end at least). The construction at this point and the anticipated removal of derelict commercial buildings could change the feel of the beach dramatically. This makes it particularly difficult to rate.

Rating

   A beach in process