Audioguides Wollongong

Wollongong occupies a narrow coastal plain 85 kilometers south of Sydney, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Illawarra Escarpment to the west, a wall of sandstone and rainforest rising to 400 meters along the city's entire length. The Port Kembla steelworks, established in 1928 and at one point the largest integrated steelworks in Australia, defined the city for most of the 20th century and drew migrants from over 100 countries to work its furnaces. The steelworks still operates at reduced scale, and the industrial landscape around Port Kembla remains part of what gives Wollongong a character distinct from the beach towns that surround Sydney.

The Nan Tien Temple, completed in 1995 on a hillside in Berkeley at the city's southern edge, is the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere.

The complex covers 8 hectares and includes pagodas, gardens, museum, meditation spaces, and a vegetarian restaurant open to the public. It draws pilgrims and curious visitors alike and is one of the most significant religious sites in Australia. The Sea Cliff Bridge, opened in 2005, curves around a headland south of the city where the old road was repeatedly destroyed by cliff collapses, and the drive along it with the sea below is one of the more dramatic coastal approaches anywhere on the New South Wales coast.