Apparently we get a mention in Harry Potter, albeit spelled wrong.
Umm, we have the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. Which essentially means "the largest temple that's not really that big". There's also a bridge that's in lots of car ads.
I am shocked at your lack of local pride Hbriz. I'll put it down to your youth.
Wollongong is the home of WIN Corporation, Australia's largest regional television network. It broadcasts to every state in the country.
The first programme shown in colour on Australian television was
The Aunty Jack Show, based in Wollongong.
1987 500CC Motorcycle GP World Champion Wayne Gardner is from Wollongong.
Port Kembla is the home of the largest steel mill in the southern hemisphere.
Lawrence Hargrave, aeronautical pioneer and inventor of the boxkite, tested his inventions from Stanwell Park in Wollongong's northern suburbs. In 1894 he was able to fly to a height of 16 feet suspended below a string of his boxkites. He also improved curved aerofoils and in 1889 invented the rotary engine. Hargrave never applied for any patents as he believed that inventors should be free to advance technology by improving on the works of earlier inventors. He made a significant contribution to the development of human powered and unpowered flight. Hargrave appeared on Australia's old paper $20 banknote.
Wollongong's far northern suburbs are linked by Lawrence Hargrave Drive, which includes the Seacliff Bridge. Built to replace a road that ran along the cliffs and was constantly being closed by rock falls, the Seacliff Bridge has appeared on TopGear Australia and just about every Australian car commercial produced since its opening. It also appeared in Shell's famous commercial featuring historic Ferrari F1 cars in various locations around the world. Shell originally wanted to film the Ferrari driving across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but as closing SHB for filming would inconvenience tens of thousands of Sydney motorists, the New South Wales government was only willing to do it if Shell made a large donation to a children's charity. Shell refused and came down to Wollongong to use our bridge instead.
In 1939, Wollongong man Evelyn Owen invented the Owen Machine Carbine (a submachine gun). It was a very simple, cheap submachine gun that was subsequently produced by Lysaght's at Port Kembla all through WWII and proved to be hardier and more reliable than the Sten and Thompson submachine guns already in use with the allied armies. Costing only $30 each to manufacture, over 50,000 Owen Guns were produced and they remained in service with the Australian Army up to and during the war in Vietnam.
The University of Wollongong was the first college in the country to be awarded Australian University of the Year twice. It was the first foreign university to open a campus in the United Arab Emirates when it created the Institute of Australian Studies (now the UoWD) in Dubai in 1993. Over 10,000 foreign students live in Wollongong so that they can study at UoW. Alumni include-
-Former captain of Great Britain's national rugby league team Jamie Peacock
-Former Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives Stephen Martin
-
Nip/Tuck and
Fantastic Four actor (and son of former Australian Prime Minister Billy McMahon) Julian McMahon
-Physics professor Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, the most well-known science commentator on Australian radio and television.
Lady Chatterley's Lover author D.H. Lawrence wrote one of his novels while staying in the Wollongong suburb of Thirroul and artist Brett Whiteley died in Thirroul.
Wollongong was the home of Garry McDonald's mock interviewer character Norman Gunston. Gunston was a awkward, pallid character with a comb-over and covered in shaving cuts. He presented himself as a genuine interviewer with a bumbling style and remarkably little knowledge about the celebrities he was interviewing. He filmed pieces with some of the most famous actors and sports-people in the world. He was also on hand to interview the key players in Australia's only real constitutional crisis when the Governor-General dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975. Here he is famously reducing Sally Struthers to a giggling mess-
Australia's largest ice cream manufacturer Street's (now owned by Unilever) was founded in the Wollongong suburb of Corrimal.
Wollongong and the Illawarra region is known as one of the best rugby league nurseries in the world. A lot of legendary players came from here including Greame Langlands (one of the seven "Immortals" of rugby league), Bob Fulton, Steve Roach, Garry Jack, Rod Wishart and many more. Almost every team in the National Rugby League has at least one player from the Illawarra region in their playing roster.
Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
