Show off your town without playing tour guide.

Your people are coming to Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest. Here’s how to show family or friends a genuinely good time with less stress for you.

Living here, you’re already proud of the Barrington Coast towns connected by a bridge that literally sings. You know it’s not a metaphor.

On a windy day, the Singing Bridge spanning the Myall River between Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest hums with the wind through its railings. Locals find it charming and first-time visitors find slightly surreal.

It sets the tone perfectly for two towns that have been quietly surprising people for years.

Start the day right

Tea Gardens wakes up gently. The riverbank is the place to be in the morning, coffee in hand, watching the Myall River catch the light while the pelicans figure out their day.

2 Fat Bakers Bakery open early which gives you plenty of time to try out their delicious selection and the Tea Gardens Boatshed is the place for something substantial ansd special.

Cross the Singing Bridge into Hawks Nest and walk down to Bennetts Beach. Wide, white and almost always uncrowded, it’s the kind of beach that makes guests go very quiet for a moment and then say something like “why don’t we come here more often.” You can enjoy being right.

Send them off to explore

Myall Lakes National Park is the big one. Hawks Nest is one of the entry points into a park that is, by any measure, extraordinary.

The state’s largest coastal lake system, protected under the Ramsar Convention as a Wetland Of International Significance. Jimmys Beach is a short walk from town and utterly lovely.

Yacaaba Headland Walking Track delivers panoramic views of Port Stephens and the coast that reward every step of the climb.

Lazy Paddles offers guided kayaking tours on the Myall River that introduce guests to the waterway at the right speed, which is slowly.

Dark Point Aboriginal Place is a significant Worimi cultural site within the national park and worth approaching with appropriate respect and curiosity.

End the day together

Tea Gardens has good food and a relaxed approach to evenings. The restaurants along the waterfront do the job of making dinner feel effortless, which is exactly what you want after a day in the national park.

The absolute standouts are Mumms On The Myall, Tea Gardens Boatshed and Tillermans. But keep an evening spare for pub classics at the Tea Gardens Hotel.

Pindimar, a tiny settlement further around the northern shores of the bay, is worth the short boat trip if your group is feeling adventurous and the conditions cooperate.

For guests staying longer

Seal Rocks is an hour north and delivers one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline on the entire NSW coast. Number One Beach remains one of the best-named beaches in the country.

Port Stephens is thirty minutes south and offers dolphin cruises, sandboarding on the Stockton dunes and the kind of activity menu that suits groups with mixed interests.

One last thing

Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest sit at the southern edge of the Barrington Coast, which means they’re often where people enter the region from Sydney and Newcastle. If your guests are driving up from the city, suggest they stop here first rather than pushing straight through.

First impressions matter, and these twin holiday towns at our southern gateway make a very good one.

You bring the people. Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest will handle the rest.