24 November 2012 - Surf Beach Holiday Park, Illawarra, NSW

Some days are challenging and today was one of them, or at least the greater part of it. We slept well, I attended to a small pile of laundry and soon had the lunch packed up, a new batch of milk made up; just a normal kind of day thus far.

We had two days of exploration in store and I had asked Chris which he wanted for today to best fit with the cricket test viewing. He elected for the “bigger” day and so we headed off for Shellharbour, a little to the north up the Princes Highway.

Shellharbour is technically a southern beach suburb of Woolongong, but actually a city in its own right with 65,000 inhabitants. Back in the 1830s, Shellharbour was a thriving little port on the coast, backed by Lake Illawara which is effectively a great tidal estuary covering over thirty six square kilometres. In 1859, Shellharbour was established as a municipality, a collection of the villages of Shellharbour, Lake South, Oak Flats, Albion Park and Albion Park Rail, and stayed pretty much the same, surrounded by farmland, for many years. Development started in the 1950s and ‘60s and since then it has grown like topsy, proclaimed a city in 1996.

We should have started with the original “village” of Shellharbour, and then might have felt differently, however hindsight is a wonderful thing. Instead we foolishly made our way to the first of the Information Centre’s shown on the very poor free map we had, substantiated by TomTom’s direction. Instead we became lost in a construction site, part of the huge mess of a shopping centre undergoing expansion. So we headed for the second one on the map, again confirmed by TomTom. Maybe it did exist in that location fifty years ago? Certainly not now. And to be fair, none of the signs from the highway had shown the “I” sign. It would appear there is no Information Centre in Shellharbour. So there we were, without the tearoff detailed town map we count on when we arrive in a place, without clear direction of what we should see while there and without a clear understanding of the place at all.

We headed for Barrack Point, a rocky point jutting out into the Tasman surf, covered in lovely houses. From here we could see for some distance up the coast toward the industrial chimneys of Port Kembla and back to the Illawara escarpment; all rather hazy. We found our way up to the entrance of the lake and headed around its southern shore. There is a pleasant strip of green reserve all along the lake, or at least that part we travelled. We stopped at one point and stood on a small jetty over the shallows, deciding there must be a small tidal range given the seaweed and seagrass growing so close to the shore. Several coast guard types were busy at a nearby shed; we thought we had better not distract them from their endeavours with our silly questions.  

Soon we found our way back to the same shopping centre we had lost ourselves in before and picked up the weekend newspaper and a decadent sweet to supplement our lunch. All about were new developments, new houses. In fact I reckon that 90% of the dwellings in Shellharbour must be less than twenty years old. We thought it a particularly odd sort of place, without heart. The shopping centre was a maze of tight little turns between the many shops, all jammed on the side of a slope. Quite frankly, Shellharbour left us cold.

We decided to head for the Bass Point Reserve on the southern edge of this strange place, and in doing so passed through Shellharbour Village. Here we sensed a better ambiance, perhaps we should not have been so dismissive.

Out on Bass Point, we ate our lunch in shade while appreciating the views north, then set off for a short two and a half kilometres walk along the coastal path through the ever present banksias and casuarinas. It was very pleasant and there were quite a few locals who had arrived to enjoy the recreational area and fishing from the rocks. The walk was not very challenging and did little to consume the extra thousand calories but then food is a great comforter and we needed some of that.

And so that was Shellharbour for us. We returned to Kiama, stocked up with provisions at the excellent Woolworths supermarket here and came home to bring in the washing and check out progress on the cricket. Still anyone’s game at this stage.

Since arriving home a great big motorhome has lodged itself between us and our nearest neighbour. It would seem that the owners are here to catch up with their adult children who are also camped in the park. We have lost our privacy. It has been one of those days.