
I grew up in one of the most beautiful places in the world, except we didn’t know it then. The South Coast of New South Wales I remember had big, open beaches with roaring waves and plenty of rock pools and lagoons for swimming or floating about on a board. We had the beaches to ourselves most of the year round. Sure there were other local families out in boats and fishing from the pier, but there was a lot of space to go around.
Christmas came but once a year thankfully, the locals would mutter. Cars from Sydney appeared on the streets after Boxing Day. Sometimes there would even be an intrepid explorer from Melbourne or Canberra. The one set of traffic lights in town got a little bit crowded and doing the weekly family shopping meant you had to wait behind someone else for a change.
My family left this hidden secret of a place, as you do when jobs and study are elsewhere. I went back a few times with my family and then with friends in those early years. It never let me down. The coast was still wild and beautiful. But years passed and I lived in other places, walked on other people’s beaches, and didn’t get back to the South Coast.
Plenty of other people did though and I would have these odd conversations with people in the most out of the way places. About how the South Coast had the best beaches in Australia or how they’d grown up on the coast too and one day they’d go back because beaches elsewhere, they just didn’t match up.
So with these seeds planted and once again living much closer, my little family spent a long weekend exploring just one part of the vast South Coast. We leave Canberra, the nation’s capital, with tents and food early one Friday eager to beat the crowds who we’re told will be heading off too. It’s lunchtime and Kings Highway out of the city is consistently busy but not overwhelming.
19th century gold mining village
There’s a lot of land to go around in Australia and driving really brings this home to you. We take a break in Braidwood, just over an hour out of Canberra. I remember empty shops lining the streets of the village years ago, and a general air of expectation wrapping itself around the town, as if waiting for something to happen. Today, the main street is busy and the shops are open. As a former gold mining town, it has mid-19th century charm, revealed on the main road and in the miners’ cottages and churches on the side streets. The people on the streets make me smile; it feels like seeing an old friend restored to good health.
The Clyde Mountain
There’s an air of determination as we get back in the car for the trip down the Clyde, as it’s colloquially known. The Clyde Mountain has always been approached with some trepidation. Going up or down it was not for the faint hearted, or the novice driver. Serious accidents regularly continue to take place, particularly on the 40-kilometre stretch with sharp bends as we go up and over the Great Dividing Range.
The road closes in as we move off the tablelands and start the climb down the mountain. The tall eucalyptus forest on either side shades the road. It's thick and beautiful in the way only Australian bush forest can be, with multiple shades of green layered upon layer.
I am absolutely obedient to every road sign all the way, and am pleasantly surprised by how quickly the descent is over. Millions of dollars have been poured into enormous signs telling you to slow down and new overtaking lanes to smooth out some of the hairpin bends.
Down we come off the mountain and the road uncurls itself. Before long the first glimpse of the sea appears and then disappears through the trees, deep blue in the near distance. Then the glorious waterway that is the Clyde River opens out in front of you. The wide expanse of water, with the tiny settlement of Nelligen on its banks, was always the signal that we’re close now, not far to go to the beach.
There are many beaches up and down the South Coast of New South Wales, which stretches from just south of Sydney right down the eastern coast of Australia to the little town of Eden, close to the Victorian state border. For our rediscovery trip, we’ve selected Depot Beach, 24 kilometres north of Bateman’s Bay.
Not far over the Clyde River, just outside Bateman’s Bay you leave Kings Highway and head north. We’re looking for a right hand turn off Princes Highway onto the oddly named Mount Agony Road. This takes you winding through a spotted blue gum forest to Depot Beach.
Watch for lyrebirds though, for some reason these rare shy birds like this road.
It’s already getting dark as we pull into the National Parks campground opposite Depot Beach. It’s a well-equipped campground with showers, electricity, barbeques and a rainwater tank, nestled in the forest. Some campsites are powered and suitable for caravans and RVs. Unpowered sites are best for medium sized tents. The campsites are numbered and the National Parks staff are clearly used to managing large numbers of eager families. The whiteboard outside the office has clear, detailed instructions.
Camping with the wildlife
We rush against the falling light to put up tents, cook food and get to the beach. But our efforts are hampered by the determination of the wildlife. With just a few daypacks on the ground, a kangaroo sniffs out our meagre leftovers and attempts to pry open a plastic lunch box. Despite his very nimble paws, the plastic box defeats him, so he moves on to hanging around my small dinner preparations. My camp stove sits on a tree log, just at the right height for the kangaroo. They are cute animals but also very strong. I don’t fancy my chances if he does make a lunge for the food. Dinner is only saved by an partly successful attempt to lure him away. In the end, he gets bored at not finding anything to eat and hops away to search elsewhere.
After dinner we head to the beach to sit close to the waves on the cooling sand. The beach is loud. I remember it being loud, even though the waves aren’t huge. Depot Beach is not a big wave surf beach. The waves crash rhythmically against the sand. The dark silhouette of trees against midnight blue skies behind us hide the small collection of houses next to the campground.
It's only us on the beach and it's so very easy to feel a long way from anywhere.
It’s the stars though, which take centre stage. Without city lights to hide them, the stars shine bright and strong, revealing the intricate patterns and sheer density of them all up out there. Off in the distance, a lighthouse is framed by the soft glow of Sydney and Wollongong on the horizon. The beach feels familiar and welcoming in the night-light.
Yet I know not everyone shared this same comfort on the Australian beach that I do. I’ve just finished reading Michael McKenna’s book From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories where he describes the 1797 journey of five British and twelve Bengali sailors up the South-East Coast of Australia. On route from Calcutta to Sydney, they were shipwrecked on Preservation Island off the tip of Tasmania and this small group was shipwrecked again off their long boat on 90 Mile Beach near Lake’s Entrance, Victoria. They knew if they stayed on the coast and headed north they would find Sydney. The only British settlement at the time, it was a 700 kilometre walk away up the South Coast of New South Wales.
It’s not the 700 kilometres of the South Coast which is the gripping part of this story. These are the very first white people local Indigenous nations met. McKenna tells the story of contact, how in some parts of the South Coast the sailors were befriended and helped by the Indigenous nations, assisted across rivers in Aboriginal canoes and fed on Australian bush foods. By the time they walked across Depot Beach, twelve sailors had been left behind, too weak to keep going. At Bateman’s Bay they almost drowned several more men trying to cross the river. Some couldn’t swim and they weren’t very good at building rafts to cross the river. Further up the coast, the sailors were surrounded and wounded by 100 Aboriginal men as ritual markings for not following cultural protocols on entering country.
On the beach
The next day is deliciously warm and families head down to the beach early. Here away from the city, it’s a clear water beach unencumbered by seaweed or pollution. You can see right through the water to the white sand below. The waves are perfect for body surfing or riding a board. Capable swimmers can go out into the gentle swell past the break line and find an easy place to swim laps. The calm waters are also popular with kayakers and paddle boarders, who we see over the weekend enjoying the gentle swell. In the waters around the rocks, all the men of a large extended family go snorkelling for sea urchin, a delicacy often eaten raw.
When the water gets too cold there’s the giant sandpit of the beach to warm up on. Building multi-tiered sandcastles complete with shell decorations and moats running down to the waves is an Australian tradition. Beaches up and down the South Coast are regularly dotted with families intent on creating sandcastle masterpieces.
The area became Murrumarang National Park in 1975.
As the mid-day sun hits strong, the beach heats up and we head to the shade of the forests surrounding the beach. The National Parks and Wildlife Service are thoughtful educators of the Australian environment, and there are well-posted information signs and walking trails. Close to Depot Beach there’s a short rainforest walk which takes you through damp gully vegetation, pointing out the animals and plants along the way.

Coastal forest
From Depot Beach, it’s also easy to explore the coastal bushland, which is what we do on our last day. On trails around the headlands, we stumble across a stunning angophora forest. It is thick with waist-high green cycads and the tall straight trees with their pale pink bark. With views stretching far out into the Pacific, this headland is an undiscovered secret of the area. We have the trails to ourselves, just us, the ocean and the forest. The rustling of the cycads and the angophoras hide the roar of the waves, and provide a different soundtrack to our weekend at the beach. Just like our first night on the beach under the stars, I feel at home in the Australian bush. I imagine this is what the Aboriginal people felt living on this land for thousands of years.
More permanent settlers soon followed our weary British sailors in 1797. White farmers and timber cutters started appearing on the South Coast from the late 1820s onwards. Pebbly Beach, around the headline from Depot Beach, had a timber sawmill, a school and homes for 200 people.
Like other parts of Australia, two very different economic and social systems clashed here. Aboriginal nations resisted the theft of their land, and its resources. Farmers and workers shot Aboriginal people. In 1830, farmers in the area complained of their cattle being speared. Not long after musket balls fired by an overseer fatally killed two men and two women of the Yuin nation. This war of attrition continued through the 19th century and permanently shattered the comfort of the land for its original inhabitants.
Reciprocity is a key part of Aboriginal customs. Based on a culture of sharing resources and food, each nation had strict protocols to guide giving and receiving. White settlers saw the spearing of cattle and sheep as unprovoked. Yet they had not asked local Aboriginal groups if they could use the land on which they grazed their animals.
The next day it’s time for us to leave the dense green comfort of the coastal forest, the soft, cool white sand and the sparkling clear waters of the South Coast. We have an early lunch in Bateman’s Bay, the seaside town where the Pacific Ocean meets the Clyde River. No trip to the coast was ever complete without a meal of freshly caught fish, straight off the trawler, with hot potato chips.
As we make our way back up the twists and turns of the Clyde Mountain, I muse on the passing of time. At the fringes, the South Coast of New South Wales is different to when I lived there years ago. There are more shops and more people. The roads are better and the campsites are busy. But at its heart, it’s still wild, open and beautiful. The stars glitter just as brightly. The water is crystal clear and the sand white through the waves. The forest wraps multiple layers of green around you. The big open beaches we love so much in Australia are still there.
Getting there: The South Coast of New South Wales is the 600 kilometres south of Sydney stretching down to Eden, on the Eastern Coast of Australia.The Princes Highway is the most direct route to Depot Beach from Sydney. Don’t be deceived by the short distance of 270 kilometres from Sydney to Depot Beach. This is a decent four hour drive from Sydney. The Princes Highway winds its way down the coast and is not a freeway. On the King’s Highway from Canberra, it’s a good 2.5 hour drive.
Where to stay: Depot Beach Campground run by the National Parks and Wildlife Service has campsites starting from $25AUD for an unpowered site. Powered sites and simple cabins are also available. There is also an $8AUD park entry fee per vehicle per day.
When to go: Average summer temperatures are around 25ºC with the hottest recorded at 43ºC (77°F to 109°F). Average winter temperatures are 7ºC to 16ºC (47°F to 60°F). The campground will be busy on Australian school holidays and all public holidays. The water can be cold for swimming in winter and spring but still great for canoeing and kayaking. It is much warmer in summer and autumn. The forests are ideal for bushwalking year round. Carry plenty of water in summer.
Look out for: Lyrebirds, eastern grey kangaroos, possums, sea eagles, satin bowerbirds, spotted blue gum forest and angophora forest.
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