The plan will help to enhance viewing areas, install interpretive signage and artwork, and improve pedestrian and vehicle access throughout the headland precinct, which stretches from MM Beach to the volunteer coastguard building.

Additionally, the graffiti-covered network of tunnels underneath the hill built to house guns during World War II could be opened to the public.

Port Kembla resident and Labor councillor Ann Martin welcomed the new plan, describing her experience of walking through the tunnels.

“They are quite extraordinary… at the end of one of the tunnels there is a panoramic view over Fishermans Beach,” Cr Martin said.

“I am hoping that perhaps the tunnels will become a cantina or something exciting so that people can come there during the day and night and enjoy it.”

Cr Martin said the site was especially significant to the indigenous community and noted this rich history would be put on display through new signage and a walkway.

The walkway, known as the Ngaraba-aan Trail, will celebrate Aboriginal history and link Port Kembla heritage park to Coomaditchie Reserve. A series of artistic plinths and viewing panels will also be installed to highlight thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation.

According to the conservation report attached to the new plan, Hill 60 and its surrounds contain ‘‘a rare suite of Aboriginal sites which demonstrate the evolving pattern of Aboriginal cultural history and the Aboriginal land rights struggle’’.

This is rare along the NSW coast, the plan says, especially due to well-preserved shell middens, prehistoric stone artefacts and a burial ground where a human skull was found in 1974.

The council took control of Hill 60 in 2006, buying it from the federal government for $1, after community protests stopped the land being sold.

A viewing platform will be the first project from the plan put in place, with councillors voting to consider funds during the 2016/17 budget process.

During the debate, independent councillor Vicki Curran urged her colleagues to do more to fund the Hill 60 revamp, saying the precinct would be a boon for Wollongong tourism.

“We’ve got a plan but we have no money for it, but actually I think we could, if we tried,” she said, suggesting the council may have capacity to borrow money to fund the plan.

Cr Curran said archaeological investigations and engineers reports would cost “big bikkies”, but needed to be funded in the short term to capitalise on tourism opportunities.

She said the precinct was a “hot spot” which could provide a historical and cultural experience for future visitors who would arrive in Port Kembla via cruise ship next year.

“Heritage tourism is big… and [Hill 60] has so much in one spot,” she said.

“It has the best … view that you can get in the Illawarra, it has the most amazing possibility to incorporate heritage, a cafe experience, views like no other and beaches like no other. It is stunning.”

“We’ve got Sydney harbour wanting to offload the cruise ship market, and we have to be in a position to offer big things close to the port.”