It may be in the depths of recovering from the worst floods in living memory but Byron Bay officially boasts Australia's most Instagrammable beach.
Researchers commissioned by sports nutrition brand Myprotein have sifted through a year's worth of images on the social media platform in order to make the call.
The northern NSW surf mecca was a clear winner.
While technically a cluster of beaches rather than a single golden strip, Byron's 30 kilometres of sandy shores registered more than 3.1 million times on the Insta feeds.
Sydney's picture-perfect Bondi ranked a distant - but still respectable - second with almost two million hits, thanks to its golden sands, excellent swimming, breathtaking views and renowned restaurants.
Melbourne's third-ranked St Kilda Beach appeared in more than 1.2 million posts, no doubt due to its popularity with joggers, rollerbladers, windsurfers and all-weather swimmers.
Airlie Beach on Queensland Whitsundays coast ranked 4th with 380,000 tagged photos and Perth's City Beach 5th with 240,000.
Sydney beaches also featured in three more top 10 spots, with Coogee 6th, Tamarama 8th and Bronte 10th.
Cronulla placed 12th, Dee Why 21st, Avalon 22nd and Whale 26th, while Hyams (20th) and Bar (27th) were the other NSW beaches to make the list.
Queensland's Whitehaven rated 7th and Rainbow 9th.
The Sunshine State had 11 beaches in the top 30 in total including Snapper Rocks (11th), Mermaid (13th), Shelly (14th), Coolum (16th) and Sunshine (19th).
WA also boasted Cable (15th), Cottlesoe (18th) and Lucky Bay (24th).
Victoria's Altona (28th) and Safety (30th) also made the 30 as did South Australia's Henley Beach (17th).
Photos of more than 130 Australian beaches were analysed using relevant hashtags and their variants.
More than 26 million images were examined during an international study last year to find beaches with the most Instagram posts.
Kelingking Beach in Indonesia won with a total of 338,193 pictures per 80 metres of shore or 4227 pictures per metre.
Second place belonged to Bondi with 1777 pictures per metre, followed by Railay Beach in Krabi, Thailand, Tropea in Italy and Greece's Navagio.
Australian Associated Press
