Start from 33 curated places around Port Stephens, AU, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Little Beach Boathouse
A glass-walled dining room and deck cantilevered over Little Beach jetty — the upscale waterfront restaurant in Port Stephens, with a tightly local menu built around Stockton pipis, Nelson Bay tuna, and bay-caught crab. The booking the whole region defaults to for an anniversary.
Rick Stein at Bannisters
Rick Stein's only Australian outpost outside Mollymook, on the ground floor of Bannisters Hotel at Soldiers Point — a seasonal seafood menu leaning on local pipis, blue swimmer crab and rock oysters. The destination meal for the western side of the bay.
Trails & outdoors
Tomaree Head Summit Walk
The headline 2.2km return climb from the Shoal Bay car park to the 161m summit — concrete steps and steel walkways, 30 to 45 minutes up, and the view from the platform that puts the whole port and its islands at your feet. Steep but manageable.
Tomaree Coastal Walk
A 27km multi-day coastal track from Shoal Bay to Birubi Point connecting the port's beaches, headlands, and remnant WWII gun emplacements — opened 2024, designed as a 2 or 3 day walk with campsites, but most of it works as day stages of 5-9km.
Things to do
Moonshadow-TQC Cruises
The largest of the d'Albora Marina cruise operators with seven vessels — dolphin cruises year-round, whale watching May to November, plus sunset and Broughton Island runs. The default first-day-in-Port-Stephens activity.
Imagine Cruises
An advanced-ecotourism-accredited cruise outfit running a 54-foot sailing catamaran out of d'Albora — smaller crowds than Moonshadow, more focus on dolphin behaviour, sailing-power option, plus a snorkel cruise to Fly Point.
Landmarks & sights
d'Albora Marina Nelson Bay
The working marina that doubles as Nelson Bay's town centre — cruise berths along the eastern arm, a strip of waterside cafes and seafood takeaways along Teramby Road, and a foreshore walk that gives you the whole harbour panorama. Every dolphin and whale cruise boards here.
Gan Gan Lookout
Port Stephens' highest accessible vantage point at 160m on Lily Hill Road — a 100m flat path from car park to viewing deck, with a panorama from Newcastle's stacks south through Tomaree, Yacaaba and Stockton Dunes north. The orientation stop locals send first-timers to.