Catherine Hill Bay

Catherine Hill Bay is a coastal bay and village of about 100 houses on the Wallarah Peninsula forming Lake Macquarie, south of the Pacific Ocean entrance channel at Swansea in New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the City of Lake Macquarie local government area. The village is the oldest continuous settlement in the City of Lake Macquarie.

Largely untouched by development, the coastline looks as it would have 100 years ago, with a stunning beach, popular for fishing, surfing and swimming. The beach also has the unusual icon of a large coal-loading jetty, which has only recently been decommissioned. Patrolled in the warmer months, Catherine Hill Bay beach is also home to the Catho Classic in January, and has featured a number of cult surf movies.

The settlement was first made after land was purchased on 1 April 1865. The town of Cowper was created, to serve as a base for coal mining by the New Wallsend Company in 1873 with the first shipment on 17 December of that year. The name Catherine Hill was adopted to commemorate the schooner Catherine Hill that had run aground in 1867. Later, the Wallarah Coal Company mined and shipped coal from the area including its nearby Crangan Bay mine. This was taken over by the Coal and Allied Group. A railway originally was used to transport the coal to the wharf; later, trucks and automated loading belt systems were used. Rutile was mined from the beach sands during the 1960s.