Dapto and Shellharbour: Wollongong's Growing Southern Communities

The southern Illawarra communities of Dapto, Albion Park, and the Shellharbour local government area, the suburban corridor that extends from the industrial southern fringe of Wollongong to the coastal communities of Shellharbour, Windang, and the Shellharbour City Centre, provide the fastest-growing residential development area of the Illawarra and the community expansion that the housing affordability advantage of the southern suburbs relative to the Wollongong northern suburbs and the Sydney metropolitan market creates for the first home buyer and the family seeking the coastal lifestyle at the prices that the Sydney comparison makes attractive. The growth corridor's combination of the new residential estates, the coastal lifestyle, and the improving transport connections to Wollongong and Sydney creates the residential market that sustains the development industry's investment in the southern Illawarra land supply.

Shellharbour City Centre, the planned town centre that the Shellharbour City Council has developed as the commercial and community services hub for the rapidly growing Shellharbour LGA, provides the retail, the health, the education, and the government services that the growing population of the southern Illawarra requires without the travel to Wollongong that the absence of a local service centre would otherwise necessitate. The Stockland Shellharbour Shopping Centre and the surrounding commercial development create the retail critical mass that sustains the southern community's commercial self-sufficiency at the level that the population can support.

The Shellharbour coastline, including the Shellharbour Beach, the Bass Point and the Bass Point Reserve, and the Killalea Regional Park, provides the coastal recreational resource that the Shellharbour LGA's growing population uses for the beach activities, the fishing, and the coastal walking that the quality of the southern Illawarra coast provides. The Shellharbour Small Craft Harbour, the marina and boat ramp facility that the coastal community's recreational boating and the fishing industry uses, provides the water access that the recreational boating and the fishing communities of the southern Illawarra depend on for the coastal recreation and the commercial fishing activity that the harbour supports.

The Lake Illawarra, the coastal lagoon between the Wollongong and Shellharbour coastal communities that provides the flatwater recreational environment for the boating, the fishing, and the waterbird habitat that the lake's sheltered water creates, is managed by the Lake Illawarra Authority for the recreational, the environmental, and the flood management functions that the coastal lagoon performs for the surrounding communities. The lake's water quality and the lake entrance management, balancing the navigation access for the recreational boaters with the environmental flows that the estuarine ecology requires, creates the management challenge that the lake authority coordinates across the competing interests of the community uses and the environmental values that the lake provides.

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