Wollongong is a medium-sized city located an hour and a half by train south of Sydney. If you have a car, you can take the Grand Pacific Drive which will take you to spectacular scenery. She is often presented as the perfect escapade to escape the tumults of her big sister Sydney because Wollongong "has everything of a big"! The city offers beautiful surf beaches with public showers, picnic areas where you can organise your barbecue evenings with your friends after a long day at the beach, numerous restaurants, markets, a pretty lighthouse, an art gallery, a planetarium, a science centre. Wollongong welcomes about 30 000 students and its inhabitants describe it as a place where the quality of life is perfect. The city has a large beach with a lighthouse on one side and a huge industrial area with smoking chimneys on the other. So much for the preservation of the coastline! The beach attracts many bodyboarders while others prefer the outdoor gym, along a very well laid out dyke. The city seems very clean, it offers a number of shops and a stadium, but apart from that there is not much to do there. Not being especially subjugated by Wollongong, we leave towards Kiama, 35 km away. The distances between two stages can quickly be counted in tens, even hundreds of kilometres in Australia! The Princes Highway, which runs along the coast from Sydney to Adelaide, offers sumptuous scenery along the way, on the hills and the sea in the distance. Kiama city has a white lighthouse perched on a cliff, just like Wollongong. That being said, the common points stop there. The small town of Kiama has a lot of charm. Around the lighthouse, two long beaches, and between two, rocks on which the waves slap with all their strength. Kiama is particularly known for its "blowhole". Below the lighthouse, there is indeed a chasm in the rocks which allows the sea to emerge, more or less violently. As it escapes, it is propelled several metres, depending on the strength of the waves. An attraction that amuses tourists and local children. Enjoy a picnic at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the deep blue sea and the strange conifers that border it. The information centre located right here is next to Pilot's Cottage Museum dedicated to the history of the area. Take a short tour of the city, where you will see colonial buildings such as those occupied by the Post Office and Westpac Bank, among others. Behind the park, take the slightly hidden alleys where you can find shops in wooden huts that you would think were straight out of western films. You will find souvenirs and especially designer clothes and accessories. Further south, is Seven Mile Beach, an infinitely long beach (it bears its name well, the sand actually stretching for 7 miles, or 11 km!) bordered by a forest of eucalyptus mainly. If you like tranquility you will love this beach where you will find all the space you want, including for walking or running. There is no shade on the other hand, the dunes pushing back the trees to several tens of meters of sand. Be careful, it is forbidden to collect shells, oddly called "pipis" by aborigines !