Dan’s got a cruuuush and he wants the world to know! Honeymoon Bay on the NSW South Coast will make you fall in love with lazing on the beach all over again.

Highlights

  • Only a three-hour drive from Sydney
  • Relatively quiet outside the summer holidays
  • Obscenely beautiful

Find True Love at Honeymoon Bay

Once I’d seen it on Google Maps I couldn’t go past it.

I was smitten.

From above, Honeymoon Bay looks like a perfect scalloped shell, like a piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the world that the creator forgot to smudge out.

From ground level, it’s surprisingly small, in a perfectly-formed kind of way, but we don’t discover this until we’ve run the gauntlet of the A1 down from Sydney, pies in hand, on a Saturday afternoon.

 

Honeymoon Bay, photo by Michael Harris

A Microadventure Playground

The journey is uneventful until we get to Currarong and look for Lighthouse Road. We drive past the intimidating military installation three times before we twig that it’s guarding the very route we seek.

Of course, we hadn’t done our homework. If we had we’d have known that most of the Beecroft Peninsula is administered by the Royal Australian Navy and used as a weapons range during the week.

They kindly open it up on weekends (Friday nights included) and school holidays to allow Joe Public to enjoy its beautiful white sand beaches, reefs and high cliffs. A trifling $15 camp fee to the gate guard and we’re through.

 

Renew Your Vows with the South Coast // Honeymoon Bay (NSW), Dan Slater, campsite, camping, tent

 

Ideal for off-the-cuff microadventures, there’s no booking system. Outside summer holidays, when a ballot system is in operation, campsites are allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Even arriving late afternoon, there are a few still available, or supposed to be. Day-visitors are directed to leave their cars in the car park before the beach, and once we work out which lazy buggers decided they didn’t have to walk those extra 300m and just parked on a camping spot, we eject them and are all set.

An East Coast Sunset Over The Water

We finally ambled down to the beach and were stopped in our tracks – it’s a stunner! The setting sun casts an orange glow on the perfect crescent of sand and silhouettes the happy folk splashing in the shallows or exploring the rocks protecting the petite bay’s entrance.

Once the Saturday trippers have left, the spot is blissfully uncrowded. Maybe the patchy cloud is helping. Who cares?

We just flop into our chairs and enjoy it, first through the evening, on into a good part of the night, and then again the next day. Could this be love at first sight?

 

Renew Your Vows with the South Coast // Honeymoon Bay (NSW), Dan Slater, beach, camping chairs, man, sand

Essential Gear

  • Beach chairs
  • Water
  • Stove
  • Tent
  • Toilet Paper
  • Beer
  • Snorkel (not in that order)
  • That novel you’ve been meaning to read
  • Someone you want to impress

How To Get There

Get yourself onto the A1 from wherever you are, then take Forest Road between Nowra and Falls Creek. Follow this to Currarong, then head south on Lighthouse Road.

The turning looks like an intimidating military complex because it is, but they’ll let you through on the weekend. The third left is Honeymoon Bay Road. Keep straight on until you hit it.

Skill Level

Beginner – it’s a beach, man!

 

Feature photo by @michaelharrisphotography