Wollongong, Australia
Wollon-gone-to-the-beach
"Steel, surf, and a nice little escarpment"
Official Coat of Arms
A shield divided by a smoking steelworks chimney and a perfect left-hand surf break, supported on either side by the Illawarra Escarpment looming ominously close to the highway, with the motto 'We Have More Than One Beach, Actually' inscribed beneath a small silhouette of a coal train blocking the crest.
TripAdvisor Review
★★★★☆ 4/5
"Drove down from Sydney expecting a boring industrial detour and ended up staying three days longer than planned. The Blowhole is genuinely spectacular but you'll spend half your visit stuck behind coal trucks trying to get anywhere near it. Nice beaches, decent coffee, and everyone kept telling me it's 'basically Sydney without the ego' which I now understand to mean 'cheaper rent, same seagulls'."— Craig Pemberton-Vance, Sydney's Northern Beaches
Property Listing
Escarpment views! Beach lifestyle! A mere 90 minutes from Sydney on a good day, or three hours if the M1 has one of its moods! This charming coastal city offers all the lifestyle perks of Sydney's north with none of the seven-figure mortgage stress, just gentle industrial ambience from Port Kembla on the breeze.
Twinned With
Newcastle — Both are proud steel towns permanently insisting they're way more than just steel towns, usually while standing next to a great beach.
Supporting Evidence
Wollongong's Nan Tien Temple is the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere, sitting in quiet, incense-scented contrast to the Port Kembla steelworks smoke stacks just down the road.