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With the nip in the air that we’re currently experiencing in Canberra, the New South Wales Central Coast is looking very attractive. So many Canberrans flock to the South Coast without realizing that a whole fabulous world awaits on the Central Coast.
I’ll admit that when we visited recently, it was years since we’d detoured off the freeway. I kept asking myself why that was so, for the journey is quicker than it’s ever been. If you get a favourable run, the Sydney motorway upgrades mean you can hit the Central Coast in 3½ hours from Canberra.
For Sydney folk, it’s a very quick hop by car, and if you’d prefer to do it by train, it’s a lovely journey across the Hawkesbury, where the pace slows down a notch as soon as you cross the river.
With an early start and a bit of forward planning, you could do it in a weekend even from Canberra, but that would mean missing out on some of the wonderful attractions we’ve highlighted below. Better still, take your time and enjoy a leisurely getaway, soaking up all that this great region has to offer.
From the beaches to the hinterland, here are six reasons to visit the New South Wales Central Coast.
The coastline is stunning
Around 90 kilometres of spectacular coastline and more than 40 unspoilt beaches make the NSW Central Coast a top destination for a weekend getaway or an extended break. Breathe in the fresh air while you go for a stroll along the shoreline or kick back and feel the sand between your toes while the kids run free.
Surfers can catch a wave at many great spots, including popular Avoca Beach, Terrigal (great for those learning to surf) and Copacabana (for the more advanced). A local favourite is Soldiers Beach, near the historic Norah Head Lighthouse, where there are great views for whale watching in winter. Sunset on the beach and lighthouse is gorgeous.
Volunteers have done a fabulous job of restoring the lighthouse and you can do a tour with them to learn all about the duties of the lighthouse keeper and how the lighthouse operated. (Tel: 1300 132 975.) Climb the 96 stairs and enjoy 360-degree views from the top. Just imagine polishing the prism’s 700 lenses! The area around the lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper’s quarters is beautifully maintained and it’s a lovely, serene spot for walking or a picnic.
A vast network of waterways makes the Central Coast perfect for fishing, kayaking or paddle-boarding. Numerous local operators have equipment for hire if you don’t have your own. Popular spots include Brisbane Water, Tuggerah Lakes or beachside lagoons at Copacabana, Avoca and Terrigal.
An abundance of natural beauty
The Central Coast is not just beaches and waterways – it extends to a swathe of hinterland where you can enjoy bushwalking, cycling, mountain biking and horse-riding. Follow the trails to spectacular views, rainforest and waterfalls. If you want to take your pooch, there’s an abundance of pet-friendly tracks and off-leash areas. Check out some dog-friendly spots here.
One of the quickest and easiest walks is to Somersby falls. A 100-metre-track winds down to the base of the falls, with plenty of lookouts along the way. There are steps, so you’ll need some level of fitness, but it’s a rewarding walk and a nice spot to cool off in summer.
One of the most popular walks is the Bouddi coastal walk, which extends 8 kilometres between Putty Beach and Macmasters Beach. With great views of beaches and birds — and whales if you’re lucky — it’s one of the easiest and most beautiful walks on the Central Coast.
Another lovely walk is the Wyrrabalong National Park coastal walk between Forrester’s Beach and Bateau Bay, or if you want to explore some rainforest, set out on the Palms circuit track at Lake Munmorah, with its canopy of cabbage tree palms.
More challenging are the steep Maitland Bay track which leads down to a shipwreck, and the Patonga to Pearl Beach track in Brisbane Water National Park. Pack your swimmers for a dip at Pearl Beach.
Inspired by this abundance of natural beauty, the Central Coast has a thriving arts scene and many internationally renowned photographers and artists call the region home.
Lots of great restaurants and cafés
We ate so well during our visit, and I’ve heard such great reports about the Central Coast café and restaurant scene that I’m determined to go back for more.
We loved Cecilia’s Restaurant & Wine Bar in Toowoon Bay and I guarantee you’d be hard-pressed to find more passion in a restaurant anywhere. “We like to be playful,” says Cecilia Vu, who owns the restaurant with her husband Sean Grobbelaar.
Cecilia was a pharmacist in a previous life but Sean was in the hospitality industry, and after they moved from Sydney to the Central Coast in 2015, hospitality has become her focus too. Every wine she served with our degustation menu was delivered with enthusiasm and a little story about its origins – they pride themselves on their wine list, and Italian varieties are a particular favourite.
“We live by the motto to expect the unexpected when you dine at Cecilias,” says Sean. That is certainly true of chef Adam Viner’s innovative seasonal menu which on the night we dined included octopus bathed in a dashi sauce with XO chilli on top, Slow-roasted pork belly with roasted fig and a slow-reduction whiskey sauce; and Biscoff-caramilk cheesecake with sticky chai syrup. For weekend lunches, Cecilia shares her Vietnamese culture through her traditional beef Pho.
Another delightful surprise for us was Little Miss Mezza. Surprising because I never expected to find a restaurant of this calibre in a suburban shopping centre in West Gosford. The décor belies its location. With an Insta-worthy fit-out, it serves Middle Eastern food with a contemporary Australian slant, along with interesting wines and seriously awesome cocktails.
For a quintessentially Aussie experience, it would be hard to go past Saddles Mount White where the country-chic ambience extends to bar stools made from – you guessed it – saddles. The homestead-style dining room is cosy with plush lounges while the wraparound veranda offers alfresco dining overlooking a picturesque lake.
We shared an extensive tasting menu, the highlight a grapefruit marmalade tart with beetroot, honey, cream cheese and pistachio. The lightness of the tart and the combination of flavours were truly heavenly. Other outstanding dishes included charred WA octopus with chilli corn fritter; 6-week dry-aged striploin on the bone with chimichurri; pan-fried duck breast with miso broth and soba noodles; and a fragrant fish curry.
All dishes were beautifully matched with Australian and imported wines. For a post-prandial stroll, there’s a nursery selling gorgeous garden and home wares.
Enterprising food and drink producers
A long list of Central Coast providores, farmers, fishermen, craft brewers, distillers and artisan producers ensure that you can eat and drink very well. With fertile farmland and bountiful waterways, locally grown seasonal produce is the real deal here, not just a catchphrase.
It’s not all serious. If you ever wanted to feel like a kid in a candy store, visit the Chocolate Factory in West Gosford, home to confectionery producers Nougat Limar, Bon Bon Fine Chocolate, and The Sydney Marshmallow Co. Along with sweets, treats and gifts for sale, there’s a Create-A-Bar where you can design your own custom-made chocolate, factory tours, housemade icecream, chocolatier workshops for kids, and a café serving lunch and afternoon tea.
Limar claims to be the world’s second largest producer of nougat. It’s one of a dozen or so producers on the Central Coast Makers Trail, along with the Broken Bay Pearl Farm (featured further along in this post) and the Firescreek Botanical Winery.
Firescreek owner and winemaker Nadia O’Connell embraces permaculture, full circle and regenerative farming techniques, then selects fruit and native botanicals to produce her organic and vegan-friendly wines.
Normally if you said ‘fruit wine’ to me I’d run a mile, but Nadia’s wines are seriously good and hospitality folk think so too. When world-class restaurant, Noma, did their enormously successful pop-up in Australia in 2016, they took her violet elderberry wine and her lemon verbena wine.
Nadia was a university lecturer in Singapore before having a “crazy midlife crisis” and buying the 2.5-acre Firescreek property with her fly-in fly-out worker husband in 2015.
The lush grounds are abundant in temperate rainforest, flower and vegetable gardens, fruit trees and berries, and a kiwifruit trellis she calls the Tunnel of Love. Running through the property is the peaceful and serene Fireflies Creek, which transforms into twinkling lights at night when fireflies visit en masse.
Nadia is grateful that the distillery’s previous owners were generous in sharing their knowledge about making fruit wine. She has continued to perfect the process, drawing on the farm’s 40 or more botanicals to make the 22 wines in the current line-up. On average it takes her around 18 months to make a wine.
We highly recommend popping into the Firescreek cellar door and signing up for a foraging and mixology workshop, or a chocolate and wine pairing experience. We had a taste of the latter, and my oh my! Raspberry and apple wine, gently heated for winter, served with fine dark chocolate, and Nadia’s favourite, Elderberry, cinnamon and orange wine with Grand Marnier truffle, are a symphony of flavours and deliciousness.
Nadia was a driving force in setting up the Central Coast Makers Trail, a self-drive trail with a smorgasbord of experiences including oysters, locally made cheeses, chocolates, nougat, botanical wines and more.
Every oyster has a story. Sometimes, it ends with a pearl
The Broken Bay Pearl Farm is a hidden gem, literally. On the Hawkesbury River at Mooney Mooney, Broken Bay is the only pearl farm in New South Wales. Here, Pearls of Australia cultivates the highly prized Akoya oyster, which produces lustrous pearls in a luminescent mother-of-pearl shell.
The cleverly named Shellar Door, in a revamped oyster shed on the river, has beautiful pearl jewellery and indigenous artwork for sale. You can do a guided tasting and shucking demonstration, learn the secrets of pearl production, and enjoy a grazing lunch with freshly shucked local oysters.
You can also join a cruise to see the oyster leases, passing beautiful scenery along the way. We sailed past Dangar Island, under the heritage-listed Hawkesbury River railway bridge, and saw Aboriginal caves and rock carvings. There were once Aboriginal settlements all along this river.
If you’ve ever wondered why pearls are so expensive, you’ll have a greater appreciation once you hear how they are cultivated. The oysters are lifted from the water every 4 weeks to be laboriously cleaned of their barnacles.
Even more interestingly, Broken Bay Pearl Farm is responsible for one of the country’s newest gastronomic treats. It is now producing Akoya oysters for the table, and while we haven’t had the opportunity to try them yet, we understand they have an intriguing taste, with the creamy finish of a Sydney Rock oyster but a mussel-like texture.
Another product we’re keen to try is the oyster gin from Distillery Botanica in Erina. After catastrophic floods a few years ago, Pearls of Australia ground all its damaged oysters into a powder that went into gin – which lends a whole new flavour to the notion of pairing oysters with beverages.
A great place to get away from it all
Glamping at Glenworth Valley was a lovely way to end our Central Coast sojourn. Despite it playing host to a large crowd of campers vying for a limited number of showers and toilets that were quite a trek from many of the campsites, Glenworth Valley Wilderness Adventures is a peaceful retreat nestled deep in a picturesque valley just 15 minutes’ drive from Gosford.
There are a range of packages offering everything from kayaking, abseiling, and quad biking, to horse-riding lessons and guided trail rides. Or you can just do as we did and breathe in the fresh air before lighting a campfire and kicking back with new friends and a bottle of elderberry and cinnamon wine from Firescreek Botanical Winery.
There is some villa and cabin accommodation but mostly it’s camping and glamping. Camping equipment is available for hire. Glamping tents are set up by Simple Pleasures Camping Co. and include luxurious beds and bedlinen, but they are some distance from the shower and toilet block. A day visitor pass is also available.
An absolute treat is to be at Glenworth for the running of the horses, which takes place in the late afternoon as a backdrop for wedding photography and other occasions. The spectacle of 250+ horses galloping en masse is a sight to behold, and just one more reason why the New South Wales Central Coast deserves to be on your travel wish list.
If you go:
Travel north from Sydney or south from Newcastle on the Pacific Highway (otherwise known as National Highway 1 or F3 Freeway).
Trains depart from Sydney Central or Newcastle Railway Stations approximately every half hour. Woy Woy, Gosford, Tuggerah and Wyong are the main station hubs.
Christine and Maurie visited the New South Wales Central Coast as guests of Destination Central Coast. If you enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy our stories on Broken Bay Pearl Farm and The Beachcomber Hotel & Resort.
With thanks to Destination Central Coast for hosting us for two nights – one night at Glenworth Valley Wilderness Adventures and one night at The Beachcomber Hotel & Resort in Toukley, a lovely property with waterfront views.
Photos are © FoodWineTravel where indicated. Other photos in this post were supplied by Destination Central Coast and used with permission.
Another few reasons to head back there!