Toolinna Cove is the only small pocket of sand on the 160 km long Baxter Cliffs in southeast Western Australia. The cliffs are part of the 790 kmlong steep southern boundary of the Nullabor Plain located along the western half of Great Australia Bight and facing into the high energy Southern Ocean. The cliffs, which average 90 m in height, are formed from shallow water carbonate deposits and are rich in marine fossils. They consist of a lower (white) Wilson Bluff limestone deposited in shallow seas during the late Eocene and an upper (red) Toolinna and Nullabor limestone deposited during the early Miocene. They were subsequently uplifted to form the level Nullabor limestone plain.

The cove was used during the construction of the trans-continental telegraph line in the 1870s to transfer poles and material from ships to the clifftop via a windlass. The windlass was subsequently used by fishermen to transport their catch and was in use until about 2000, when the area became part of the Nuytsland Nature Reserve and the windlass was removed. Today the beach can only be reached by climbing down the cliffs or by boat. This view shows the cliffs and the small beach and surf zone with a bar, and prominent topographic rip channel against the rocks in the foreground. The cliffs are named for John Baxter, killed near Toolinna in 1840while accompanying John Eyre on his epic 3000 kmexploration trek fromFowlers Bay to Albany. The cliffs remain as remote and uninhabited as they were then. (Photograph taken October 2010, and caption by Andrew D. Short, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Australia).