5 Beaches to Visit on Christmas Island

The most famous thing about Christmas Island is its annual red crab migration, a surreal wildlife experience whereby you can witness millions of red crabs across the island heading down to the island's beaches to give birth.

In my mission to visit every country and territory in the world (a total standing at 269), I sometimes end up booking trips to visit some of the world's most remote places and undertaking serious bucket-list worthy adventures.

We are basing ourselves in Australia for a year, traveling around the country in a campervan. Given it's the biggest country in Oceania, it's also the perfect opportunity to visit some of the many islands surrounding it across the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.

I spent six weeks backpacking around Australia back in 2019, one of my first solo adventures and my first on a one-way ticket. During my two years I would end up living down under, mostly based out of New Zealand, I also visited Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Samoa, scratching the surface of these fascinating island nations dotting great expanses of open ocean.

When mapping out the rough corners of our year-ish down under, planning to land in Sydney at the beginning of October, I realized it would be the perfect timing to fly out to Christmas Island six weeks later from Perth. Primarily to witness the world famous red crab migration, we spent a week on Christmas Island and explored all the other things to do on the island aside from looking for crabs.

→ Check out my complete guide to witnessing the red crab migration!

However, seeing the crabs is not the only thing to do on Christmas Island. Although it's quite a basic island when it comes to tourism and lacks extensive infrastructure, as the focus is on wildlife (and the mining industry) instead of tourism, there are still a few things to check out. As it is an island, there are quite a few beaches dotted around which offer snorkeling, hiking and exploring. Here are the five beaches we visited on Christmas Island:

Flying Fish Cove

Flying Fish Cove is also the name of the main town on the island, home to most of the island's residents as well as two grocery stores, the island's only gas station, the tourism office, a post office and a few restaurants. At the edge of town, you'll find Flying Fish Cove. It's also where the port of the mine is located which kind of takes away from the tropical beach vibes.

We didn't snorkel here but it is one of the most popular spots to do so on the island. It's also the best place to witness the spawning during the red crab migration.

The best place to see a birds-eye view overlooking the entire Flying Fish Cove is from Territory Day Park.

Dolly Beach

Dolly Beach was geographically the prettiest beach we went to. You have to walk a bit through the jungle (the length of the walk depends on where you can park due to red crab road closures) and then you reach the beach at the bottom of a tall, metal staircase. Unfortunately, when we visited, it was full of plastic and washed-up trash so we didn't stay too long.