Wattamolla Beach

This guide to Wattamolla Beach in Sydney's Royal National Park opens on a stormy night in March 1796, when the tiny boat Tom Thumb, carrying young naval officer Matthew Flinders, his friend George Bass, and a boy named William Martin, is caught in a fierce southerly gale while mapping this stretch of coast. It also traces the beach's Dharawal name, a shipwreck's castaways who stumbled onto the same sand a year later, and a twentieth-century land deal that kept the lagoon public. Listen for the gap in the sandstone cliffs as you look toward the water.