The South Coast - New South Wales

June 01, 2024

The South Coast - New South Wales

Playing catch up again with this Blog!

In March this year, we attended a wedding at Gerringong on the beautiful South Coast of New South Wales. We hadn't been down that way for quite a few years and decided to add a few days onto our time so we could check it out again.

We stayed in Kiama, a beautiful town just south of Wollongong. Kiama and its surrounding areas of Gerroa, Gerringong, Jamberoo and Minnamurra is a picturesque area of lush green rolling hills, lovely clean beaches, beautiful rainforests and, wineries.

Of course, one of the big drawcards in town of Kiama is its 'Blowhole'; a place where the ocean swell has eroded the softer lava rock and punched a hole right through it. The resulting spray from the ocean swell being forced through the opening can get up to 30 metres in height. The noise that accompanies these 'blows' is a loud, hollow swoosh noise before the spray shoots up into the air. Although, as we found, sometimes on a calm day, there is not much blowing or swooshing; a little disappointing.

One thing I did notice in Kiama was its War Memorial Arch. Quite a large arch with a massive lean to one side. I thought I was imagining it at first but getting closer to it as we walked I could see it was definitely sinking into the ground on one side. I googled it and sure enough it has been an ongoing problem that was supposedly fixed in 2015. Any wonder it is leaning, it was built on the original Kiama Rubbish Tip and there was a small piped off creek that had run there. I don't know if it was 100% fixed in 2015 but there is still a definite lean on it.

We went north to Lake Illawarra to have a look around. The Lake itself is a nice place with an abundance of bird life. There were 2 guys fishing in a fair sized boat and they attracted a large flock of Pelicans. I love photographing Pelicans!

We spent a couple of days after the wedding touring further to Gerroa, Gerringong and, Jamberoo. Gerringong is a lovely, quaint, hilltop village. Surf fashion, Cafes, Restaurants, Art Galleries and a Micro Brewery are worth visiting. Coastal views are spectacular from the hilltops with the green hills rolling gently down to beautiful golden beaches. There are also more rugged seascapes where the hills reach a sudden end to rocky cliffs straight down to the ocean.

Gerroa is a small headland village on the mouth of the Crooked River. It's popular for it's Seven Mile Beach and a number of small beach coves that stretch south from the village.

West of Kiama is a small place called Jamberoo. Jamberoo has a lot for all ages. There is a massive water theme park, tree top walks through the rainforest and popular zip lining to name a few. We decided to visit the Minnamurra Rainforest where you can hike on pathways up to the Minnamurra Falls. I think this is about a 5km round trip walk. It wasn't so much the distance as the gradient of the walk up to the falls; we had very sore thigh and calf muscles by the end of the day! Totally worth the pain though, walking through the Rainforest and seeing the spectacular waterfall.

We were lucky on this trip that the weather held out for most of it. Thankfully the Wedding we attended took place on a beautiful sunny day (the wedding venue was a dream!) There was some grey skies but the rain but it was sporadic and didn't ruin our time away.

We didn't get to visit everywhere in the few days we had and are keen to head back down for a longer stay.

I took the Canon 90D with various lenses but ended up using the 18-135mm zoom; it's so versatile and I didn't want to muck around changing lenses too much. I didn't take a film camera with me as we were only away for 5 days and didn't want the extra camera bag to carry. Mind you, I do have quite a few films that need to be finished already so I'll have to make that a priority!