Our guide to the best ice cream on the South Coast

No, I'd skip his culinary masterpieces and instead head straight to the dessert bar.

Call me an ice cream addict if you want, but I just can't get enough of the moreish frozen treat so to coincide with the arrival (finally) of some summer weather I issued myself a challenge.

Twelve hours to find the best ice cream our South Coast has to offer. Now, if you're thinking this is just some junket I've cooked-up under the guise of "research", you couldn't be further from the truth.

This ice cream crawl is serious business. There can't be any distractions, so I've left the kids and Mrs Yowie at home, so it's just me and 250km of Princes Highway between Berry and Bermagui.

There are only two rules. One ice cream peddler per town (need to spread the love) and it must be home-made. Oh, and finally, I don't care what it's called - I'll take ice cream or gelato, which, for the uninitiated is the Italian word for ice cream and traditionally has a much lower milkfat percentage and due to slower churning, a denser texture.

First stop is the Dairy Bar at the Berry Treat Factory (Old Creamery Lane) near Nowra. From the moment I first set eyes on the 1950s-style milk bar housed in the town's original 1895 creamery, I know this is going to tick all the boxes, even if it's still early, and ice cream for breakfast is usually off-limits. Yes, even for me.

Apart from taste, when it comes to eating ice cream, location is important, especially if you've battled the traffic to get to the coast. For a landlocked Canberra, ideally you want the Tasman Sea lapping at your feet.

However, with the briny still 10 kilometres from Berry, unless you want a stream of your melted honeycomb and salted caramel combo pouring out of your centre console, the beach is a drive too far.

Instead, I pull up a stool on the historic creamery's wooden deck. It's udderly (sorry) delicious. No waves here, but the next best thing - green paddocks grazed by the very cows who produce the milk for the ice creamery. Hence their clever marketing slogan "from cow to cone".

Before I mooove (ok, I'll stop now) along, I can't help but notice there's a commercial gym next door. However, there's no time to work off the calories for my next stop is 45km south, where in Huskisson, flanked on one side by a Japanese restaurant and on the other by a 1980s mum-and-dad-style motel is Simon Mercier's 1960s Franklin silver bullet caravan - Mercier's Gelato (32 Bowen St).

While I'm queuing (it is holiday season after all) an ageing hippy lugging a surfboard painted with flowers assures me "a gelato a day keeps the doctor away".

Mmm, I'm not too sure about his amended adage, but whatever his secret, Mercier has been making waves with his home-made gelato since setting up shop here three years ago.

I'm torn between tucking into one of his artisan (a fancy way of saying home-made) gelatos under the rustling palm trees outside his van or wandering across the road and down to those famous white sands of Jervis Bay.

So, I do both. At the van, I wolf down a blood orange and pannacotta cone and then while indulging in a cup of hazelnut gelato complete with a shot of coffee, dip my big toe into the salt water. Talk about win-win.

Fast approaching noon, I need to put a few kilometres under my fast-needing-to-loosen belt before the next stop.

I zoom south past Mollymook (yes, yes, next time I'll try Mollymook Beach Hut) and Ulladulla and over the sweeping new bridge at Batemans Bay (bring back the old bridge I say) and into Mogo where incredibly I snare a car park right outside the Mogo Ice Creamery (38 Princes Hwy). You know the one housed in a refurbished petrol station.

Remember my rule only one stop per town? Well, I was planning to call in on the other ice cream store in town, but I take my lucky park as "a sign" and stride into the Mogo Ice Creamery instead, where, for some reason the home-made flavours are hidden in drums under the cabinet. In fact, asking for one is a bit like buying contraband.

So, after sidling up to the counter and checking over my shoulder a few times to make sure no one is looking I quietly ask the cheery lady serving me what the most popular flavour is.

"People rave about the ginger," she whispers, adding "but, beware, it's not everyone's cup of tea". I'm not a big fan of ginger, but you know, when in Rome ... Beside there's no such thing as a bad ice cream, is there?

The first spoonful is a shock to my taste buds, which after my first two port of calls, are more attuned to sweet sensations than a hit of peppery ginger.

The more I eat, the more it seems the ratio of ginger chunks to ice cream increases and by the time I'm half-way through the tub, it feels like I'm gnawing on an entire ginger root.

It's the first ice cream I've never finished but I can't say I wasn't warned.

Further south, I give the lines of kids stretching out of the Ice Cream Parlour on the main street of Moruya a wide berth.

Not that I don't want to road test their highly rated creamy banana, rather the Mogo ginger is now churning in my tummy with as much vigour as the big swell that's brewing at the mouth of the Moruya River.

Thankfully my digestive system settles by the time I drive into Bodalla, where I meet Sandra McCuaig outside her ice cream lab at the Bodalla Dairy Shed (52 Princes Hwy).

"It's our busiest month of the year so we are flat out making ice cream," she says, still sporting hairnet and apron.

A former fleet street journalist, McCuaig bought Bodalla Dairy in 1989.

However, just more than a decade ago, with the arrival of the $1 milk, McCuaig realised her business needed to value-add or perish and she soon after opened the Dairy Shed and started selling cheese, and, you guessed it, ice cream.

Having never made ice cream on a commercial scale before, when McCuaig offered to buy the necessary equipment from a Sydney business, she insisted the owners temporarily relocate to Bodalla to teach her the ropes. Really.

"Luckily they agreed, and eight months we were producing our own ice cream," she explains.

The rest is history. People now drive hundreds of kilometres to buy tubs of McCuaig's ice cream and just last year her daughter, Jane Stuart, opened a shop selling Bodalla Dairy branded products in Woollhara.

Talk about a success story.

One of McCuaig's prize-winning flavours (of which there are many) is Let's go Camping. Gumleaf smoked Ice cream with butterscotch and a macadamia praline. Talk about a mouthful. It's a bit smoky for me, so I try kakadu plum and rum which is, er, a bit too Kakadu plummy and rummy for me so I eventually settle on Go Wild - a mix of Queensland lemon myrtle, Bodalla yoghurt and local Ironbark honey. And boy does it hit the spot.

With the ice cream lab, grassy areas for the kids to play and poddy calves to pat, the Dairy Shed has fast become the ultimate summer roadside treat stop.

Heck, they've even got motel rooms here, so if you've over-indulged in a bit too much ice cream, crash the night. I'm tempted. But my day isn't over. My mission isn't complete yet.

In Narooma, I stop at a servo for fuel. When paying at the counter the attendant offers me the special on Magnums. Call me an ice cream snob if you like, but pre-packed, mass-produced ice cream, even if it's a half-priced White Magnum just doesn't cut it. Not today, anyway.

Further south, Gulaga (Mt Dromedary) looms large on the horizon. From a couple of vantage points I swear it resembles the top of a giant ice cream cone. Oh dear, maybe all this ice cream is getting to my head after all?

Just like Sandra McCuaig has the frozen dessert market in Bodalla cornered, down at Bermagui, the Bermagui Gelati Clinic (73-79 Lamont St) is the place you'll find any self-respecting gelato lover.

"The name came about as our first shop was in an old veterinary clinic, so we just painted over the sign," explains Alberto Cementon and Francesca Michielin of their shop's unusual moniker which they established in 2003 after moving from Italy to the seaside village.

Cementon's friend was a master gelati maker in Italy and helped the couple set-up shop, but it wasn't all plain sailing.

"It took us a long time to work out the exact recipes that worked for us here," explains Cementon, adding "the science is the same as in Italy, but we had to adapt them as the milk, the water and the air are all different".

While chocolate remains a favourite amongst customers, not all of Cementon's more adventurous flavours have been a success.

"I made a curry gelato but it tasted like curried egg so no one went near it, and then one Australia Day we concocted a Vegemite gelato," reveals Cementon.

Many requested "a taste" but only a handful went on to buy a scoop. "Don't think we'll try that one again," he laughs.

The duo modestly claim they are yet to make the perfect gelato, but as I tuck into my mango and cardamom with saffron combo overlooking the sparkling waters of Bermagui Harbour, I reckon they've nailed it. Perfection in every way. Taste, price, location.

With a milestone wedding anniversary just around the corner, I'm thinking of suggesting to Mrs Yowie it's time to renew our vows.

While I'm confident she'll agree, I'm not too sure how keen she'll be on my plans to head to down-town Bermagui for the second honeymoon.