This beach town feels like a throwback to a simpler time

I’m sitting at a picnic table tucking into takeaway fish and chips with a group of friends when I hear a chorus of excited cries from our offspring, who are lined up with their rods along the riverbank nearby. Curious, I jump up and follow their gaze out to the middle of the waterway, where a fishing trawler chugs past in front of a blazing orange sunset. Beside it, two dolphins break the surface, fins glinting in the dying light, before slipping back beneath the waves.

The Macleay River begins beneath Blue Nobby Mountain in the Great Dividing Range and meanders for nearly 300 kilometres before spilling into the sea at South West Rocks, where we’re enjoying dinner in a park opposite the lively Riverside Tavern.

I’d passed the turn-off to this beachside town countless times on road trips up the Pacific Highway, bound for busier, better-known spots on the NSW North Coast. I’d long heard whispers of its beauty and kept promising myself I’d visit “one day”. That day finally came when I rallied a group of friends for a long weekend at NRMA South West Rocks Holiday Resort.

Backing onto bushland, the resort delivers everything you could want from a classic family holiday. The kids dart between the pool, spa and the pirate-themed water park, scrambling up ropes to the ship’s deck, shrieking as the giant bucket tips a cascade of water from the mast at regular intervals, and racing down the slides. They bounce on the jumping pillow and plead for coins to take on the claw machines, foosball table and arcade favourites like Mario Kart and Zombie Outbreak in the games room.

We stay in a three-bedroom Eucalypt Cottage, which lies outside the resort perimeters on the main road just beyond the entrance. With separate access via a set of timber stairs at the rear, meaning there’s no need to fumble with the keypad each time you enter or exit, it strikes the right balance between being private and self-contained, yet close enough to enjoy the resort’s amenities.

Located roughly halfway between town and Arakoon National Park, the resort also makes an ideal base for exploring. First on our list is a dose of history at Trial Bay Gaol, where the kids enjoy playfully “locking” each other in the small stone cells and seeing kangaroos grazing among the ruins. Opened in 1886, the prison was part of an ambitious plan to create a safe harbour for ships travelling between Sydney and Brisbane.

Convicts were put to work constructing a breakwater to tame the wild bay. But 14 years later, just 300 metres of the proposed 1.5-kilometre structure had been built. Due to damage from storms, cost blowouts and the silting of the bay caused by the structure itself, the project was abandoned. During World War I, the jail found new life as an internment camp for German civilians and other so-called “enemy aliens”, many of them well-educated businessmen and diplomats. Traces of that history still echo through the town. On the way back to our accommodation we cross German Bridge, and suddenly its name makes sense.

Other days are spent discovering the region’s beautiful white sand beaches, from broad stretches of coast to the secluded cove of Little Bay Beach, where swimmers enter the water through a passage between granite cliffs. Back in town, the kids drift along the Saltwater Creek estuary on bodyboards, the current sweeping them through rocky channels like a natural water park. On the other side of the headland, teens leap from Back Creek Bridge and glide through the mangroves on stand-up paddleboards.

While visitors battle traffic jams in Byron Bay and Coffs Harbour strains under the weight of overdevelopment, South West Rocks feels like a throwback to the simple Aussie beach holidays we all remember.

THE DETAILS

GETTING THERE
South West Rocks is around five hours’ drive north of Sydney via the M1 and Pacific Highway, and an hour north of Port Macquarie.

STAY
NRMA South West Rocks Holiday Resort has a range of accommodation options, including unpowered campsites from $52 a night, glamping-style safari tents from $137 a night and three-bedroom cabins from $335 a night. See nrmaparksandresorts.com.au

MORE
See macleayvalleycoast.com.au

The writer was a guest of NRMA Parks and Resorts.