Exploring Lake Macquarie and surrounds

We divert off the motorway and take a closer look at the oft-forgotten haven between the Central Coast and Port Stephens: Port Macquarie and surrounds.

Passing through Newcastle

Driving through Newcastle can sometimes feel like driving through one immense industrial estate.

While Newcastle’s steelworks and port city origins mean it will never be Australia’s most handsome metropolis, there’s an appealing collage effect to its CBD and surrounds – here a coal mine, there a cargo port, around the corner a luxury hotel, across the road an historic cathedral, and up ahead a wharf-side bar.

On our way to Stockton, we eat lunch at Lynch’s Hub, a café hut across the water from the Port of Newcastle.

From this vantage we can practically see our lodgings at NRMA Stockton Beach Holiday Park, but because the Hunter River’s mouth is a tangle of peninsulas, getting there requires a 20-minute drive with two bridge crossings.

Arriving at our Stockton Beach accommodation

As we roll into town, I’m slightly alarmed to see ‘Save Stockton 2295’ signs posted here and there, but it’s not about to be handed over to developers or become a sand mine. Years of erosion took a toll on the beach and from our Breakwall Villa we can see the rectification works underway near the holiday park’s northern tip.

As I learn later, our villa’s uninterrupted water views come courtesy of these erosion issues – a whole row of waterfront cabins had to be removed to make way for the beach regeneration project.

Other things we can see from our cabin include Lexie’s on the Beach café (I could almost shout my daily coffee order from our door) and the breakwall after which the cabin is named.

Exploring Stockton Beach and Queens Wharf

Following a mid-afternoon swim, we walk up the beach to the breakwall and trace its length out to the wreck of the Adolphe, which ran aground here in 1904.

Plaques erected along on the breakwall attest that the Adolphe was one of many ships lost to the sandbanks and heavy seas that made entering Newcastle Harbour so perilous before Nobbys Lighthouse and the breakwall were erected.

Locals have also taken to affixing plaques as memorials to lost loved ones along the breakwall’s cobbly edges, lending a somewhat maudlin mood to this blustery walk. In the evening we drive down to Stockton Ferry Wharf. Services to Queens Wharf in Newcastle depart from here every 20 or 30 minutes.

What would otherwise be a 20-minute car trip is dealt with in five minutes and the Queens Wharf Hotel is only 50 metres from the dock where we disembark. We head upstairs to the Skiff Bar for dinner and a sundowner.

From here we watch the sun set and the ferrying of more passengers back and forth. A necklace of lights lines the Hunter River foreshore, adding a twinkle to our return journey.

Adventures on the road to Nelson Bay

I wake the next morning to a dawn that coastal dreams are made of: warm and clear with just a puff of cloud on the horizon to diffuse the sunlight and give the sky a bronze hue. Terns wheel through the air and divebomb the water to snap up a fishy breakfast.

Anna Bay is also visible from Stockton Beach, but it’s another example of something that looks nearby proving surprisingly distant – a good half-hour drive north-east along Nelson Bay Road.

We stop first at Birubi Beach and we’re eager to take the kids to Oakfield Ranch Camel Rides – one of a number of activities on offer at Birubi, including sand tobogganing and a 4WD tour.

Irukandji Shark and Ray Encounters

Our next destination is Irukandji Shark and Ray Encounters, which had only just opened the last time we were here. General entry allows visitors to go shin- or elbow-deep in the enclosures and, using special peg-like tongs, feed stingrays and sharks.

Believe it or not, some of the larger rays will come when called and can learn more than 50 words. Some studies even suggest manta rays are sentient and can recognise themselves in a mirror.

For an additional fee, visitors can pull on a wetsuit or a snorkel and get an up-close encounter with the sharks.

Lunch at Birubi Beach

Once we’ve had our fill of the sharks and rays – and they’ve had their fill of prawns and squid – we backtrack to Birubi Beach. The facilities at Birubi are excellent, including toilets, showers, changing areas and a viewing platform where shutterbugs can grab the perfect snap.

We lunch at Crest Birubi Beach, a café with one of the best beach views on the eastern seaboard and transcendent coffee.

Exploring Nelson Bay

We continue along the peninsula (with a brief stop at Gan Gan Lookout to take advantage of the spectacularly clear day) to Nelson Bay, a place where I spent many childhood holidays. The d’Albora Marina never ceases to astonish my eye – the area was a fishing co-op, weigh scale and not much else in the early 1980s.

Nowadays it’s a bustling marina with cafés, restaurants, fashion shops and, of course, the all-important Marina Ice Creamery with so many desirable flavours I develop selection anxiety. We take our ice creams to the water’s edge (which these days is a designated fish sanctuary) and watch various fish species flash past.

Tired but elated, we make the drive back to the holiday park and grab some authentic Italian grub from the on-site cart that’s open Thursday through Sunday. Anyone interested in a convenient sit-down option on a Thursday can head to Lexie’s, which becomes a Mexican restaurant and bar in the evening.

Swansea offers a perfect stopover

Our time at Stockton ends and we head south. I suggest a stop at Swansea for lunch. It’s a town I remember from those childhood runs up to Nelson Bay, but I only know it as a cluster of shops on the busy main road. A two-minute drive inland, however, reveals it’s also home to one the prettiest parts of Lake Macquarie.

Here the kids paddle in the shallows among the fingerlings and scout for shells while I take photos of the stunning waters, which gradate from clear to turquoise to indigo. My wife googles our lunch options and finds Tides Café & Restaurant, which is tucked in under the bridge next to Swansea Channel.

Meandering Lake Macquarie to Caves Beach

We continue down the road to our home for the next two nights, Caves Beach. Another morning, another gorgeous day. We commence a partial circumnavigation of Lake Macquarie, following the meanderings of The Esplanade.

Our first stop is the Pelican Foreshore Markets, situated on the beautiful waterfront at Pelican, just north of Swansea. While parents browse the stalls, children take turns hurling themselves off the wharf, bouncing on jumping castles or waiting in line at the ice cream van.

Lake Macquarie is Dog City – we’ve never seen so many canine companions – and handmade dog bowls and collars feature prominently among the stalls. The parks and cafés in the district cater to doggos as well, many offering communal water bowls or treats for sale at the register.

Play and art at Speers Point Park

We continue through shoreside suburbia until we reach Speers Point Park and find plenty of fun in this immense outdoor park, which even on a busy Saturday doesn’t feel overcrowded.

The attached café is a stroke of genius and we take an early lunch there before hitting the road again for the Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie in Booragul.

Sculptures dot the parkland on which the facility is situated (more are found along the walkways that surround Lake Macquarie), while the air-conditioned gallery provides a diverting respite from the hottest part of the day.

On exhibit during our visit are works from local high school students. The quality and originality are remarkable. My son, not renowned for his attention span unless it involves Roblox or Minecraft, has to be dragged away from some ‘micro art’ designed to be appreciated through the lens of a microscope.

The caves of Cave Beach

But leave we must, otherwise we’ll miss low tide and the chance to explore the namesake caves of Caves Beach. We anticipate an arduous, ankle-imperilling clamber across rocks to get there, but the famous caves are just a short stroll from the surf lifesaving flags on the main beach.

One cave is really no more than an archway, while a second – photographs of which you’ve probably seen – is like a short tunnel through the rock. The third is a proper spelunking-type cavity and not recommended for claustrophobes.

On the far side we discover more crevices to explore (they’re all dead-ends) and a labyrinth of rockpools. We immerse ourselves in a rockpool channel, enjoying the tide spilling in around us.

On this warm and clear Saturday there’s a buzzing energy to Caves Beach that makes it feel more like a water park than a natural formation sculpted across millennia.

Lake Macquarie

Only three years ago, author Scott Bevan published The Lake, in which he noted that Lake Macquarie seems to get overlooked even though it’s situated between two heavily populated areas of the Central Coast and Newcastle.

Perhaps it’s due to the decidedly Australian notion that anything less than a two-hour drive isn’t a ‘real holiday’. Summer or winter, this region is an underrated jewel of NSW tourism.