Woy Woy and Peninsula Living: The Character Behind the Central Coast's Quieter Side

The Brisbane Water Peninsula communities of Woy Woy, Umina Beach, and Ettalong Beach, connected to the Central Coast's northern communities by the rail line through Gosford and the highway that crosses the Rip Bridge at Woy Woy, provide the distinctive character of the southern Central Coast that the peninsula geography and the estuary environment create in the contrast with the ocean beach communities of the northern shore. The Woy Woy community's association with the late Barry Humphries, who attended Woy Woy's school as a child and who described the town in his early satirical writing in the terms that the estuary community's insularity and the suburban Australian life of the 1950s created, provides the cultural heritage note that distinguishes Woy Woy's community identity from the beach towns of the northern Central Coast.

The Brisbane Water, the estuary that Woy Woy borders on its eastern side and that provides the tidal waterway for the recreational boating, the fishing, and the waterbird habitat that the estuarine ecology of the enclosed embayment creates, gives the peninsula communities their waterside character and the quiet alternative to the surf beach lifestyle that the ocean coast communities define as the Central Coast's primary identity. The waterbirds of the Brisbane Water, including the pelicans that the Woy Woy feeding tradition has made the town's most recognisable wildlife encounter, sustain the natural character of the estuary that the development of the residential foreshore has otherwise modified.

Umina Beach, the suburb on the ocean side of the peninsula that provides the surf beach and the more suburban residential character for the family and the older community that the peninsula's combination of the school catchments, the lower property prices relative to Terrigal and Avoca, and the proximity to the Gosford services creates, provides the most affordable beach suburb on the Central Coast and the entry point for the Sydney family migrant who wants the Central Coast beach lifestyle at the price that the more southern location of the peninsula and the slower transport connection to Sydney's employment create. The surf at Umina, consistent and uncrowded by the standards of the more popular breaks of the northern Central Coast, provides the local surf community with the quality wave environment that the peninsula's relative isolation from the Sydney day tripper preserves.

The palm tree avenue of Ocean Beach Road in Ettalong, the signature visual identity that the planted palms create along the commercial strip of the peninsula's smallest town, provides the aesthetic distinctiveness that the community uses to mark its identity within the peninsula geography. The cafes and the small restaurants of the Ettalong commercial strip provide the community the local food and social culture that the summer visitors from Sydney who use the Ettalong ferry from Palm Beach discover as the character of the community that the ferry connection and the small-town scale preserve from the mainstream tourism development that the larger Central Coast beaches attract.

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