This region looks just like a slab of warm, just-from-the-oven bread after your five-year-old has nibbled around the edges (and in the middle for good measure).

Water fills the gaps and laps around the edges. It’s everywhere and in all incarnations: a wild ocean, gentle lakes, ambitious blowholes and meandering creeks. As you drive along the main coastal highway, every corner seems to reveal a new lake or promontory until, confused that water is on the wrong side, you wonder if you are heading the right direction.

Water has always been the centre of life here – Aboriginal people called the southern part of this area Eurodulla which means ‘place of many waters’ and I have no reason to disagree: they got it right first go. What they perhaps didn’t imagine was that the rocks from which they harvested oysters and the rivers where they caught their dinner would prove a perfect place for a family holiday now.

Sue at a caravan park in Narooma told me a customer recently told her he had bought his boys here to relive the time he spent there as a kid. A time of lazy hours at the beach and spotting dolphins off-shore; of long lazy bike ride and spotlighting for animals.

From the upward explosion of seawater in Kiama (in the north) to the creeks of Jervis Bay and the hidden lakes further south, water plays a central role here. Yet man-made attractions abound too, making this a wonderful place for your family to reconnect with each other, and connect with nature.

Image courtesy Tourism NSW