Sydney's southern neighbour squeezed between the Illawarra Escarpment and the Pacific — where Wollongong sits on a narrow coastal strip 80 km south of Sydney with the Illawarra Escarpment (a continuous sandstone cliff-line rising 200–400 metres directly behind the city) on one side and 17 beaches on the other, the Cathedral Rocks and Sea Pool (a tidal ocean swimming pool built into the rock platform at North Beach — one of Australia's most distinctive seawater lidos) is 3 minutes' walk from the CBD, Wollongong Harbour (the most intact example of an 1860s fishing harbour in New South Wales, with two lighthouses — the 1871 Flagstaff Hill lighthouse and the 1872 Breakwater lighthouse — flanking the entrance) is one of the most photographed harbour scenes in Australia, and the Sea Cliff Bridge (15 km south, connecting Clifton and Coalcliff along the base of the escarpment — a 665-metre steel cantilever bridge that clings to the cliff face above the waves) is the most dramatic coastal drive in New South Wales
Wollongong (320,000 city; 350,000 greater area) is the third-largest city in New South Wales and the third-largest in Australia excluding state capitals — a post-industrial coastal city on the Illawarra Coast between the Pacific Ocean and the Illawarra Escarpment. Wollongong was Australia's steel city for most of the 20th century (the Port Kembla steelworks operated from 1928 to the 2010s) and is now reinventing itself as a coastal university and innovation hub.
The Dharawal people inhabited the Illawarra coast for thousands of years — the escarpment's sandstone was a source of ochre for ceremony and the coastal strip's abundant marine resources supported a dense population. European settlement began in the 1810s when cedar-getters began logging the rainforest at the base of the escarpment. Wollongong's character as an industrial city was defined by the establishment of the Hoskins steelworks at Port Kembla in 1928 — which became the BHP Steelworks (from 1935) and for decades was the largest steelworks in the Southern Hemisphere. The steelworks' clos…