Mystery Bay is a small town on the south coast

South Coast, New South Wales

The South Coast refers to the narrow coastal belt from Sydney in the north to the border with Victoria in the south in the south-eastern part of the State of New South Wales, Australia. It is bordered to the west by the coastal escarpment of the Southern Tablelands, which is largely covered by a...

 of New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Mystery Bay is located halfway between Central Tilba and Narooma

Narooma, New South Wales

Narooma is a town in the Australian state of New South Wales on the far south coast. The town is on the Princes Highway. The name is said to be derived from the Aboriginal word meaning ‘clear blue waters’. At the 2006 census, Narooma had a population of 3,100 people.Montague Island, a National...

, two kilometers off the Princes Highway

Princes Highway

The Princes Highway extends from Sydney to Port Augusta via the coast through the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, a distance of 1941 km or 1898 km via the former alignments of the highway ....

 on Mystery Bay Road. At the 2006 census

Census in Australia

The Australian census is administered once every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent census was conducted on 9 August 2011; the next will be conducted in 2016. Prior to the introduction of regular censuses in 1961, they had also been run in 1901, 1911, 1921, 1933,...

, Mystery Bay had a population of 168 people. Mystery Bay features a camping area in the Eurobodalla National Park

Eurobodalla National Park

Eurobodalla National Park is a national park in New South Wales, Australia, 268 km southwest of Sydney near the towns of Narooma and Moruya.- Features :Significant sites within the park are:*Wreck of the SS Monaro*Pilot station, South Head Moruya...

. Mystery Bay holds many different types of beaches that front the Tasman Sea

Tasman Sea

The Tasman Sea is the large body of water between Australia and New Zealand, approximately across. It extends 2,800 km from north to south. It is a south-western segment of the South Pacific Ocean. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first recorded European...

. Some beaches are surfing beaches, others are swimming beaches, and a lot of these beaches contain spectacular large rocks. At low tide, these rocks become rock pools.

The bay itself is the location where the abandoned wreck of a small boat was discovered in mysterious circumstances in 1880. The boat had carried Lamont Young

Lamont Young

Lamont H. Young was an assistant geological surveyor for the New South Wales Mines Department. He mysteriously disappeared while on field-work at Bermagui, New South Wales.Young was inspecting the new goldfields at Bermagui in 1880...

, a government geologist inspecting new goldfields on behalf the New South Wales Mines Department together with his assistant Max Schneider, and boat owner Thomas Towers and two others, from nearby Bermagui

Bermagui, New South Wales

Bermagui is a town on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia in the Bega Valley Shire. The name is derived from the Dyirringanj word, permageua, possibly meaning 'canoe with paddles'....

. None of the five men were ever seen again, and Mystery Bay was named after their unexplained disappearance.