Eden NSW 29 August 2026

Why rewrite history? Here’s what I said in 2014 about the trip across Victoria to Cann River and up to Eden.

Made the tiresome journey around the coast, firstly to Cann River where every van on the road in the south east of Australia stopped for coffee and a’pitstop’, then pushed ahead and right on through to Eden where we had booked into the van park for the next week and a prettier sight I have not seen for some time. This is not really a fun journey, it’s just hard work, up and down, round and round, bump, bang, crash, road works, stop, go. It took nearly 5 hours for the 300 km. 

Anyhow, pretty well shattered, we made it into Aslings Beach caravan park, and mustering all our patience and good grace, we managed to ignore all the advice being offered and parked the damn van by reversing it into the spot the way have done for twenty years. 

The same helpful people were sitting on their chairs in the sun on the grass were a van would normally be, and they would not be. They were facing straight into our awning area and continued their conversation at full volume. I couldn’t stand it, it felt positively rude and bordered on creepy, so we went to the pub for a drink and hoped they would be gone before we got back. 

They were still going strong, so I wandered over to the beach for a stroll.

Aslings Beach. Eden NSW.

Seahorse Inn. Boydtown NSW

Woke up to bright sunny clear skies. Yippee. Went for a bit of a walk along the beach out the front of the van park. Wandered around a bit, watched for whales at the lookout and one obliged by showing itself, but way out on the horizon. We were looking for a coffee shop, but as it's Sunday there was nothing open. And so inevitably we ended up at the Seahorse Inn down at Boydtown. They have built this into a really nice place to visit from the ruins it once was. and I imagine staying here would be OK as well.

Had a pleasant lunch in the hotels restaurant, but a walk on the beach was out of the question due to the chilly breeze blowing onshore.

From the Lookout at Eden, you can see an odd looking tower way out over the bay. This is Boyd's tower, built be Ben Boyd in 1847 as a lighthouse. 

South side Twofold Bay. Spotto the tower on the point.

One story was that he built it at his own cost to be a lighthouse for his fleet servicing his expanding enterprises. Another says that he expected the Government to run it as a light house, but they refused because he hadn't paid his taxes. Whatever the truth, he went bankrupt and bolted to somewhere in the Pacific, leaving his debts and the mess behind. From then on it was used as a lookout for whale watching, right through to 1920 by the Davidson family.

Boyd's tower. Beowa NP. Eden NSW

Right around the corner from the tower is a long, new looking wharf. There is a boom gate -open. There is a sentry box - empty and closed. There is a large gate across the wharf - closed, but there is a pedestrian sized gate in the middle - open. Apparently it was built in 2002 by the Navy who use it to do things they would probably rather not talk about concerning things that go bang that they put on and off their boats as the fancy takes them. At that time the wharf is sealed of and becomes a Naval base - the rest of the time its open to the public to go fishing or swimming or whatever, and its also used to tie up other big boats such as cargo ships and cruise liners.

Naval Multipurpose wharf. Twofold Bay. Eden NSW

A bit further around the bay is an old homestead dating from 1850 and the site and some artefacts from the Davidson's Whaling Station. It so tranquil, and so beautiful, it is impossible to image the slaughter that went on here for 70 years.

Davidson's whaling station site. Twofold Bay. Eden NSW

And they did it all without a single glance at this view!
Twofold Bay. Eden NSW