The Central Coast is a peri-urban region lying on the Pacific Ocean in northern-eastern New South Wales, Australia.

The region's hinterland, which has fertile valleys, rural farmland and wineries, and also includes the Watagan Mountains.

Geographically, the Central Coast is generally considered to include the region bounded by the Hawkesbury River in the south, the Watagan Mountains in the west and Lake Macquarie, lying on the Sydney basin.

An Aboriginal man from the region named Bungaree became one of the most prominent people of the early settlement of New South Wales.

He was one of the first Aboriginal people to learn English and befriended the early governors Phillip, King and Macquarie.

In 1811, the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, gave the first land grant in the region to William Nash, a former marine of the First Fleet.

On 2 December 2005, the Central Coast was officially recognised as a stand-alone region rather than an extension of Greater Sydney or the Hunter Valley, a few years after the Central Coast got its definition, it officially got recognised to be part of Regional NSW instead of Greater Sydney by the NSW Government.

There are three campuses of the Hunter Institute of TAFE located at Gosford, Wyong and Ourimbah along with multiple private colleges.

[citation needed] In most locations on the Central Coast, Sydney and Newcastle radio stations can be received at reasonable levels particularly on the AM band.

Laycock Street Theatre, located in North Gosford, has a proscenium arch configuration and seats 392 patrons.

[16] In late 2018, the Elderslee Foundation purchased a large building along the Tuggerah Strait close to Wyong which has subsequently been renovated and repurposed into a community facility, including office facilities, hot desks, training rooms, a commercial kitchen and art exhibition space for use by the community and the Red Tree Theatre, a small adaptable space for forums, seminars, concerts, theatre rehearsals and productions.

The Red Tree Theatre features a 144-seat ranked auditorium equipped with professional standard lighting and sound.

[18] This attempt was financed by a consortium led by John Singleton, but the Gold Coast Titans were ultimately successful.

The Central Coast has numerous sporting ovals, golf courses, skate parks, tennis courts and swimming pools that are open to the public and one target shooting facility.

National parks on the Central Coast have a large range of walking paths and mountain bike trails.

Attempts are being made to attract pro golf tournaments to Magenta Shores (a new resort north of The Entrance).

3G, 4G and 5G mobile network services are available from Optus, Telstra and Vodafone, though numerous black spots exist due to the topography and remoteness of some parts of the region.

[23] ADSL and good quality fixed-wireless broadband services are widely available; however, significant blackspots continue to exist.

As of April 2015[update], Scot MacDonald served as the parliamentary secretary for the Hunter and Central Coast.

[27] Despite local opposition and concerns over Wyong Shire, in effect, being subsumed within the Gosford City Council, and claims of councillors being bullied into the merger,[28] as part of the process, merging into a single Central Coast Council local government area passed all administrative and legislative requirements and came into effect in 2016.

in regional plans and priorities by local, state and federal government agencies, with incremental investments largely in road infrastructure.

The main access to the Central Coast by road is by the 127 kilometres (79 mi) Pacific Motorway that carries the designation National Highway 1.

[33] The Pacific Motorway is approximately 3 lanes wide from the southern end of the Central Coast to as far north as Doyalson.

The western and south-eastern towns and suburbs of the Central Coast are on the Main Northern railway line.

The rail line is primarily used to provide mass transport for those that commute to Sydney or Newcastle and as such services are most frequent during peak commuter times (typically one hour before Sydney and Newcastle peak times in the morning and one hour after in the evening due to the distance).

Gosford station is the largest and main railway station in the region, which is considered a rest stop for long rail services to Sydney, Newcastle, Tamworth, Armidale, Taree, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Grafton, Casino, Gold Coast and Brisbane.

Central Coast railway stations on the Northern NSW line are (from south to north): North South Bus services in the region are operated by Busways which has depots at Kincumber and Charmhaven, Red Bus Services and Coastal Liner.

Busways operates services using Lake Haven, Tuggerah, Erina Fair and Gosford as central points.

Busways' northern services cover from Gosford and north to Tuggerah (through the Narara Valley and Ourimbah), then continue north to Wyong via Tuggerah, which in turn services the northern section of Lake Haven, Charmhaven, Gorokan, Toukley, Noraville, Budgewoi, Buff Point, San Remo, Blue Haven and Gwandalan.

Coastal Liner operate limited route bus services around Westfield Tuggerah, Wyong, Hamlyn Terrace, Woongarrah, Warnervale, Dooralong and Jilliby.