It would seem that beaches and their accompanying reefs are all different, somewhat like people. We have landed today at 40 Mile Beach Nature Based Camping Area in the Karratha shire south of Karratha. You may recall that a fees days ago we spent some time at Cleaverville which is the other side of Karratha. The caretaker there told us that we would not be able to drive in here, he said that the road required 4wd. It just shows that you have to check for yourself and not listen to the naysayers. We were driving along heading south when we saw the sign and decided to have a look, the road was unsealed but great, much better than the road to Cleaverville. So we are camped at the end of the track, all by ourselves about 29-30 metres from the beach, lovely spot, there are lots of other vans here parked at intervals along the track. Back to the shore and reef, at Cleaverville was high out of the water and rather speccie to look at, here it is flat and completely characterless. The tide still goes out a long way and this afternoon we walked about a km offshore at low tide without reaching the water. The beach itself is sort of light brown sand, much like the beaches on the other side of Australia. It is still nice to be camped by the beach. 
Just to complete the days happenings we spent most of the morning washing our van with water from the Maitland River where we were camped. In fact we actually had morning tea at the traditional 'smoko' time before leaving, I even had a swim.