Spanning 47 kilometres of dramatic coastline near Eden on NSW’s Sapphire Coast, Beowa National Park (formerly Ben Boyd National Park) is like nature writ large. Many people come here to swim and snorkel; many more arrive to lace up their boots and tackle the Pinnacles Loop walking track, a gently undulating 1.1 kilometre trail through eucalypt and pine forest as well as heathland.

There’s plenty of scenic drama from lookouts, offering vistas over the Pacific Ocean to Lennards Island in the south and Haycock Point in the north – visit from July through November and you’ll likely spot whales dancing with dolphins offshore.

The visual feast continues on dry land at the Pinnacles rock formation, a spectacular erosion feature where cliffs of soft white sand are capped with a layer of red gravel clay. It’s mind-boggling to think that this was created some 65 million years ago during the Tertiary geological period, when the extinction of the dinosaurs had just begun.