The strange beaches where the sand squeaks under your feet
WHILE you’d expect a beach to have beautiful white sand, some have an extra feature – in that they squeak when you walk on them.
TikTok user Tate Duane, who is known as twaynne, shared her beach discovery with her thousands of followers on her social media account.
Tate, who is from California, is currently living in Australia.
On a recent trip to the beach to the Gold Coast, she heard a strange sound under her feet.
In a video she posted on TikTok, she said: “This is literally insane, I’ve never heard squeaky sand before.”
For the rest of the video, Tate records her feet as they walk across the “squeaky” sand on beach, which can be heard whistling.
The video has had over 39,000 views and several people flooded into the comments to share their beach experiences.
One person wrote: “It happens a lot on Australian beaches.”
Meanwhile another person added: “[The sand] squeaks in New Zealand, I thought it was normal.”
While many people in the comments were used to squeaky beaches, others had never heard of whistling sand before.
This is because the squeaky noise occurs when a beach is almost entirely composed of white quartz grain, which is almost spherical in its shape.
Whereas most beaches around the world contain a wide variety of sand and rock grains in all shapes and sizes, so this means the beach won’t whistle.
One pearly white beach in Victoria in Australia has earned the nickname “The Squeaky Beach” because of the noise the sand grains produce.
The beach in Wilsons Prom has become a popular attraction for tourists who want to hear the sands, and dip their toes in the blue waters.
But it’s not just Australia that has squeaky beaches, they can be found all over the world including in Basin Head in Canada and Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts.
For a beach that’s closer to home head to the Isle of Eigg, in Scotland.
There are also black-sand beaches, including one in Tenerife, caused by volcanic rock.
A beach in the Canary Islands even has sand which looks like popcorn, due to the shape of the coral.