To the west of Woonona is the Woronora Plateau, averaging a height of 400 metres near the suburb, and the eastern edge of this, known as the Illawarra Escarpment.

This particular tribe extended from Botany Bay in the north to the Shoalhaven River in the south and inland as far as Picton.

The present day site was the first attempted landing in Australia by Captain James Cook on 28 April 1770.

His party, desperately short of drinking water, saw the estuary of Collins Creek as a suitable place in which to replenish their required stocks.

The timber industry was so intensive that photographs from the early twentieth century show the escarpment bare.

Coal mining brought new families from Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and other parts of Great Britain.

The old Boral brickworks, now the housing area of Edgewood Estate, was one of the last refuges of the endangered green and gold bell frog.

As recently as the 1970s, Woonona was a mostly working-class area, characterised by small houses and extensive open space.

More recently, its proximity to the much larger city of Sydney to the north, and its beach frontage, have resulted in the construction of many large, modern houses.

The Builders Labourers Federation imposed a green ban on all high rise and flat development, including major roads in the East Woonona area in 1974, at the request of a local community group.

The largest such area is occupied by Ocean Park on Carrington Road, which was filled by tip operations that ended in the early 1980s.