Forster Beach

The view from Cape Hawke, looking south

Lake Wallis

Forster-Tuncurry are twin resort towns on the entrance of Wallis Lake. The area offers some of the best beaches on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. The Myall Lakes, Smiths Lake and Wallis Lake provide extensive opportunities for fishing, water skiing, boating, sailing, wind surfing with many picnic spots, all within minutes of the twin towns.

Wallis Lake with Tuncurry to the north (right) and Forster to the south (left). Photo: NSW Dept. Natural Resources

Where is it?: New South Wales: North Coast. Forster is 540 km north of Sydney and 440km south of Brisbane, making it close to the half-way point for travellers on the Princes Highway coastal route between Brisbane and Sydney.

Things to see and do:

Because of its close driving proximity to Sydney, Forster-Tuncurry has established itself as a popular summer holiday destination, where in the hotter months, the population swells considerably. The school holidays in the colder months also bring considerable amounts of holidaymakers. Most leisure activities revolve around the beach and water. The most popular beaches are Forster Main beach and One Mile beach, serviced by Forster and Cape Hawke Surf Lifesaving Clubs respectively.

Surrounding area:

One of the state's largest coastal lake systems and 40 kilometres of beaches and rolling sand dunes make Myall Lakes one of the most visited National Parks in NSW. The Wallis Lake estuary is a complex system of lakes, rivers and interconnecting channels which separate Tuncurry and Forster, coastal towns located north and south of Forster Inlet, respectively. Kayaks are a popular way to explore the lakes, however there are many long and short distance walking paths around the lakes and along the coast. Surfers, divers and fishermen are assured of some 'great spots'. More >>>

About Coffs Forster and Tuncurry

Climate: Forster Tuncurry sits on the 32nd meridian of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. Blessed with one of the mildest climates in Australia, daytime temperatures only occasionally rising above 30 degrees Celsius in Summer or below 20 degrees Celsius in Winter. At the 2006 census, The Forster-Tuncurry area had a population of 18,372 people. This number grows considerably in the tourist season.

History: Forster, the first white settlement in the area, was originally known by the native name for the locality - 'Minimbah'. It was surveyed in 1869 and renamed in 1870 after William Forster, the then Secretary of Lands. Tuncurry was known as North Forster until 1875 when John Wright, his foreman, a sawyer and a builder set up camp there in 1875. They established cordial relations with the local Aborigines and adopted their place-name of Tuncurry which is thought to mean 'good fishing place'.
James Cook sailed along the coast but did not come ashore in 1770. In 1816, two ships were wrecked off Cape Hawke, presumably carrying the first white settlers. Three survivors made it back to New castle, the rest are believed to have been killed by the Wallamba, a sub-group of the Worimi people, one of whom speared a member of John Oxley's expedition through the area in 1818. One this trip, Oxley named Wallis Lake after the commandant of the penal settlement at Newcastle. A large portion of land here was granted to the Australian Agricultural Company (AAC) in 1825 but did little with it. In the 1850s, Chinese shepherds began fishing off the coast, drying their catch and selling it to their countrymen on the goldfields. Timbergetters arrived in the 1830s and removed much of the cedar and pine from the rainforests. The town we see today had their beginnings in a settlement that began when William Godwin and his family moved into the area from Gosford. Unlike the woodcutters before him, Godwin established good relations with the Aborigines and soon began exporting wild honey and Cape Hawke oysters to Sydney. A townsite, then known as 'Minimbah', was first surveyed in 1869 and renamed Forster in 1870. Shipbuilding, sawmilling and fishing, particularly oysters, became the town's primary sources of revenue. The Tuncurry settlement was proclaimed a village in 1893. Two Italian immigrants transformed the fishing industry of Tuncurry in the 1890s. With the building of the bridge in 1959 between the two towns and the growth that both experienced through the development of tourist facilities, the towns grew together to become one community.

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