Wilson Inlet

Wilson Inlet is an inlet located in the Great Southern region of Western Australia.DescriptionThe inlet receives water from the two main rivers: the Denmark River and the Hay River and some smaller rivers and streams such as the Sleeman River, Little River and Cuppup Creek. It is located 2km South East of the town of Denmark.The inlet is a wave dominated estuary with an opening mouth that has a width of 100m with a bar blocking it from late January to August. The inlet is separated into two basins, the Eastern and Western basin.The estuary is situated on a narrow coastal plain between granite hills to the north and the west and the coastal dunes to the south. The area of the inlet is 48km2 and has an average depth of 1.8m and its deepest point is 5m. The inlet is 14km long from East to West and has a width of 4kmThe inlet has a total catchment area of 2263km2 covering parts of the Shire of Plantagenet, the Shire of Denmark and the City of Albany.The inlet discharges through Nullaki Point at the eastern end of Ocean Beach into the Southern Ocean at Ratcliffe Bay when the sandbar is open. The Wilson Inlet bar was last breached by the Water Corporation in spring 2013. The low lying land adjacent to the inlet consists of swamps with lakes to the East. The silt beds in the area indicate that it was of recent estuarine origin. The majority of the catchment is contained within the Albany-Fraser geological province with the original granite overlaid with sands and laterite deposited in the Quaternary period.