Bali: It is as embedded in the Australian psyche as any beach in the world, a rite of passage for generations of travellers to Bali. But Kuta Beach today is desolate.
The near-complete debasement of this former paradise is not from over-tourism, though many will say this has happened, too.
Rather, recent storms have demolished swaths of the jogging path that ran along the beachfront, leaving steep, loose mounds of white rock. The tides are also swallowing up the sand.
“Look at this,” says 24-year-old surf instructor Sandro, motioning to the unsightly, hollowed-out shoreline. “People come, and then they just walk away.”
Two young women are navigating the thin strip of sand on a receding tide. Sandro assumes they are trying to sunbathe. “Can you imagine trying to lie down there?” he asks.
The women are actually attempting to find an Instagrammable selfie spot. It seems faintly fraudulent.
Luckily for Sandro, there are still waves. Although he is making a fraction of the amount he earned even a few years ago, he has a dozen or so happy customers out paddling on hired boards.
“The people who sell the drinks are worse off than me,” he says.
Strolling by are Australians David and Natalie Ritter, who have been coming to Kuta for 34 years.
“When we first came here, the beach was out to that back break,” David says, pointing out to sea. “There were big, beautiful trees here. People had weddings.”
Natalie is talking to the drink and trinket sellers, friends of theirs for decades. The couple’s children have joined in via a video call.
“These poor buggers,” David says. “These ladies, they’re struggling.”
As the tide starts to retreat, enough sand reappears for vendors to put out a few beach tables and chairs, a faint glimmer of the glory days.
“It used to be beautiful, covered in tourists,” says bracelet seller Ni Nengah Sidani, who goes by “Suzy”, a nickname given to her by Australian friends years ago.
“This was all sand, clean white sand,” she says. “We had community groups to clean it up. You can’t even sweep the beach now because of the rocks.
“I’ve earned zero money here today. Back when the beach was beautiful, I’d earn Rp500,000 ($42) very easily. I’ve started losing hair now.
“This is all I can do. This is how I earn my living.”
The beach at Legian, not far away, is filled with tourists. But Suzy says she cannot sell there because the fee to do so is more than she can hope to save, at least these days.
Surfers beat the path to Kuta Beach in the 1960s and ’70s. Generations of tourists followed, seduced by the waves, smiling locals and dirt-cheap Bintangs, best enjoyed on beach lounges under the shade of umbrellas.
Cheap and comparatively close, Bali soon became Australia’s most popular foreign holiday destination.
Overall, tourism to the island is booming, with a record 7 million foreign tourists visiting in 2025.
The Kuta vendors are missing out, partly because of the sorry state of the beach, and partly because the island’s centre of gravity has already shifted further up the coast to Canggu.
A spokesman for Balai Wilayah Sungai (BWS), the Bali organisation responsible for the beach’s health, says the chief cause of the erosion is waves from the West Monsoon, which happens each year between October and April.
But the monsoon has been hitting this beach for eons. What has changed?
The storms last year were severe. Some people blame climate change. Others say the airport and its various coastal expansions have messed with the natural currents.
The BWS spokesman says the extended runway only influences the generation of lesser, southerly waves, which are not as decisive when it comes to Kuta Beach erosion. The airport did not respond to a request for comment.
Vendors at the beach say the erosion worsened after the construction of the now-vanished jogging path, just after the COVID-19 pandemic.
But not all is lost for Kuta Beach. The government has begun replacing the sand lost to erosion, and will continue doing so. In some parts, rocks have been laid on the upper beach to absorb the force of waves at high tide. The BWS spokesman says breakwalls will be built off the south end.
The replacement sand is being collected 30 to 50 metres off the coast of Jimbaran, just south of the airport, and deep enough not to disturb the ecology there, according to BWS.
But Made Krisna Dinata, the head of environmental non-governmental organisation Wahana Lingkungan, has major concerns.
“It will destroy the fishes’ breeding ground,” he says. “For the sake of more tourists, the environment has been sacrificed, and it will continue to happen.”
It is unlikely that Bali governments will watch on as Kuta Beach fails. It is too important, too iconic, not to act. But Mother Nature is another matter.
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Zach Hope is South-East Asia correspondent. He is a former reporter at the Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
Amilia Rosa is assistant Indonesia correspondent.Connect via X.
