Wollongong real estate

The area was home to the Dharawal people. Wollongong's name is believed to come from the Dharawal language, where it may mean 'sound of the sea', 'five islands/clouds' or 'ground near water'. The city's extent takes in Helensburgh in the north and reaches south to Windang and Yallah, and Wollongong lies in the Sydney basin's south-eastern corner, a geological area reaching from Newcastle to Nowra.

George Bass and Matthew Flinders, two navigators, landed at Lake Illawarra in 1796. Cedar cutters settled the region in the early nineteenth century, and graziers followed in 1812. Charles Throsby put up a stockman's hut in 1815, and the first land grants came in 1816.

Charles Throsby Smith and Sarah Broughton Smith were the first settlers of what is now Wollongong, arriving in 1823. Charles Throsby Smith is a founding figure for the city, and he played a significant part in the settlement's first decades. A military barracks went up near the harbour in 1832, and in 1834 a town was laid out on the Smiths' land. The town was first gazetted on 26 November 1834. George Brown put up the first court house, and convict labour built the road down through Bulli Pass in the 1830s.

George Bass, a navigator, was the first to document the Illawarra coal deposits, in 1797. In 1858 a tramway drawn by horses was completed, running from Mount Keira down to the harbour. In 1878 steam locomotives were brought in to haul coal from the Mount Keira mine down to the harbour. Many coalmines have worked the district since.

Lady Belmore opened the harbour extensions in 1868, and they were named Belmore Basin. The first lighthouse was finished in 1871. A gas plant in Corrimal Street gave the town its first gas in 1865, gas street lighting arrived in 1883, and a telegraph line linked Wollongong and Bellambi from 1862.

In the 1870s Patrick Lahiff ran a coke works at Wollongong Harbour. He built two beehive coke ovens between Pulpit Rock and the basin's north eastern end. The ovens were pulled down in 1892, and their remains were later uncovered and preserved beneath the hill, with a plaque that explains their history.

A British clipper called Queen of Nations ran aground near the mouth of Towradgi Creek in 1881. Her cargo held 24,000 bottles of Hennessy Cognac. At least 5,500 bottles were recovered by the police and NSW Customs, while members of the public looted others. What is left of the wreck lies roughly 70 metres offshore, in water 3 to 5 metres deep, and a violent storm can uncover part of it from time to time. In 2024 a coal ship, the SS Nemesis, was found by accident off the coast, nearly 120 years after it sank on a voyage from Wollongong to Melbourne.

The Illawarra Railway reached Wollongong in 1887, and the line now runs south to Bomaderry on the Shoalhaven River. The town got a court house in 1861, and a new one went up on Market Street in 1885, built in a Classical Revival style. The first town hall was built in 1886, and the new court house appears on the Register of the National Estate.

Australia's worst coal mining disaster happened at Mount Kembla in 1902, killing 94 men and boys, the youngest aged 14 and the oldest 69. Two other men died trying to reach survivors, and survivors were cared for at the "A. M. (Albert Memorial) Hospital", which had opened in 1864 and closed in 1907 when the Wollongong Hospital opened on Garden Hill.

Coal drew heavy industry to the region. A steelworks opened at Port Kembla in 1928, started by the firm Hoskins, which later became Australian Iron & Steel. In 1935 the Broken Hill Proprietary Company took over AI&S. The plant grew into a fully integrated steelworks producing about 5 million tonnes a year, and the Port Kembla complex also holds a plant making fertiliser, a smelter for copper, a workshop for locomotives, export terminals for coal and grain, and a facility for industrial gases.

Wollongong's new lighthouse on Flagstaff Point was finished in 1936. Wollongong was proclaimed a City in 1942, and the City of Greater Wollongong was formed in 1947. New council chambers opened in 1956. A university college was established in 1961 and a teachers college in 1963, and the University of Wollongong is based in the city.

A Westfield shopping centre opened at Figtree in 1965. The railway was electrified through to Wollongong in 1985 and on to Dapto in 1993, and the Wollongong Mall was completed in 1986. The Illawarra Performing Arts Centre opened on Burelli Street in 1988, and a decade later the Wollongong Entertainment Centre opened with 6,000 seats.

A number of sites in Wollongong are heritage listed, among them St Michael's Cathedral on Church Street, the Wollongong Harbour Precinct, the Old Wollongong East Post Office on Crown Street, the Wollongong railway station, the Regent Theatre on Keira Street and Little Milton on Smith Street. Many industrial installations still stand, and the economy has diversified into tourism, the fine arts, higher education, residential building and eco-friendly electricity generation, though heavy industry remains central.

Wollongong sits on a narrow coastal plain, with Lake Illawarra, a large lagoon, south of the centre. The escarpment behind the city rises between 150 and 750 metres above sea level and includes Mount Keira and Mount Kembla. In the north, where the escarpment meets the coast, Lawrence Hargrave Drive runs along the cliff line, and in 2005 the Sea Cliff Bridge took over part of that route, running beside the coast above a rock shelf under the water. It carries vehicles and pedestrians.

Seventeen beaches are patrolled in season, from Stanwell Park in the north to Windang in the south, and the Wollongong to Thirroul Bike Track runs thirteen kilometres north from Wollongong Beach. Bushwalking on Mount Keira and Mount Kembla is popular. The city is known for its heavy industry, its port activity and its setting between the beaches and the escarpment, and it has two cathedrals, the Nan Tien Temple and the University of Wollongong.