Wedding Cake Rock earned its name from being said to resemble a slice of wedding cake with layers feature in cuboid shape and the rock in white colour, similar to a wedding cake. That said, when I send the above photo to both my sisters, the first question I was asked was, "Why is it call Wedding Cake Rock?" So maybe it wasn't really resemble that piece of cake.

Wedding Cake Rock is at the north of Marley Beach in Royal National Park, Sydney. It is about an hour away from Sydney CBD by train, followed by a 30 minutes ferry ride, then a 20 minutes walk to the start of the trail. Sounds far and troublesome to get to but you get a ferry ride as part of the journey and it is reachable by public transport! That's already 2 plus points right?


Getting to Wedding Cake Rock by public transport
Firstly, catch a train from the city to Cronulla station, it takes about +/- an hour. On getting out of the train, walk to Cronulla ferry wharf. Exit the train and turn left, walk through a pedestrian tunnel underpass on your left, cross the park and down to the ferry wharf.

At Cronulla Wharf

At Cronulla Wharf, you can buy tickets at a small counter before getting on the ferry if you don't have cash. Cronulla Ferry is not covered under Opal. However, only cash is payable on the ferry. It is currently $6.80 for adults, one way.

Cronulla Ferry at the end, at Bundeena Wharf

There were signs though to show the direction to the Royal National Park.


But I cheated, I pretty much just googled the way to get to the start from Wedding Cake Rock trail from IGA which was at the end of the road. There was also a public toilet near IGA.

At the start of the trail...


Warning signs to tell people to choose life over Instagram photo. Wedding Cake Rock trail is graded at level 4 but I was going at a pretty leisure pace and find that the trail is well paved.


Once you are at the start of the trail, you won't get lost. At any point of time where there are more than one turn, there will be signs letting you know where it lead to. Besides, there are other visitors around. I was there in the morning, there were other visitors but there were still many times I was walking by myself. On my return trip, however, there were many more people.


The Balconies
First stop was The Balconies. On my way back out, there were many people were at this place having a picnic or trying to spot whales!




Continuing on, you will reach an area named The Water Run.


The Water Run


Around this area there are a bit more steps, but I like the looks of the stones.


From here, it is not far to the wedding cake rock. When you see high fence it means you have reach the rock.


Wedding Cake Rock
Unfortunately there isn't much variation one can take of this cake rock from over the fence. So my photos of this famous rock are very much similar. When I was there I saw someone sat on the fence for a photo though.

I realised I didn't take a photo of the tall fence but you can see a small part of it at the far end of this photo below.


You can backtracked here or continue on towards Marley Head.


Marley Headland and Marley Beach


After another 20 minutes of leisure stroll will bring you to Marley Headland. It was a good view of Big and Little Marley Beaches from here.

I backtracked to Bundeena Wharf after here. I took the 1:00pm ferry back to Cronulla. It was a weekend in September, so luckily the 1:00pm ferry was running, else I would need to wait for more than a hour.



Side note: Ooh.. 2 more months to Christmas!