Fed-up residents of the street dubbed Australia’s “most beautiful” are fighting back after years of being inundated with daily busloads of visitors.

Tasman Drive in tiny Gerringong on the NSW south coast has long been recognised for its many charms.

But the attraction kicked into overdrive last year when TikToker David Battaglia lit up the social media platform with footage of his drive along with picturesque street, accompanied by Men at Work’s Down Under.

@davesyd_

Is this the MOST beautiful street in Australia? 👀🌊 📍 Gerringong – just 2 hours from Sydney. We’re down here for work this week… but with views like this, it hardly feels like work. ➡️ Save this spot for your next road trip!” #roadtrip #nsw #kiama #australia

♬ Down Under (do you come from a land down under) – Men At Work

“Is this the MOST beautiful street in Australia? What do you think?” Battaglia wrote on his video, which has since been viewed nearly 4 million times.

Since then, posts of Tasman Drive have multiplied like mushrooms – as have visitors to the street overlooking Werri Beach.

“It’s nice to see people enjoying it, but really, it’s just getting a bit too much,” one resident said in comments reported by The South China Morning Post.

Gerringong (population 4165) is just a two-hour drive south of Sydney and looks like many of the other pretty towns that line Australia’s east coast. Multimillion-dollar properties line up to take advantage of a bright blue sea, backed by green hills and trees.

According to local journalist Lynne Strong, who recently wrote about Tasman Drive’s ever-increasing allure: “Tourists call it a hidden gem. Locals just call it ‘trying to reverse out of my driveway while dodging influencers and Kombis’.

She reports that “cars roll in from Sydney like a sunset chasing parade [and] strangers stand in driveways for the perfect panorama of Werri Beach”.

But Strong also notes that one visitor mistook a local’s front garden for a public lookout and set up a drone launch pad between the wheelie bins.

Elsewhere, residents say they have to reroute dog walks to avoid photobombing engagement shoots. The SCMP said some Tasman Drive locals had resorted to more extreme measures, including turning on garden sprinklers to move tourists on.

Others want the street to be made one-way, to try to halt the seemingly endless stream of cars inching along as occupants film the viral view. One neighbour even reportedly sold their house to escape the furore.

“It’s a beautiful view,” one long-time resident told Strong. “But sometimes I look out my window and see more tripods than lomandra.”

Linda Bruce, 76, who lives on the street, said it was nice that people enjoyed the location.

“But really, it’s just getting a bit too much … It’s just so weird to see so many people coming all this way for the view,” she said.

“I mean, it’s an amazing country, and it’s there to share … It’s just a bit much for the locals.”

As tourists posed for selfies in the middle of the street, attracting an X-rated spiel from a local resident on a bike, another local, Peter Hainsworth, said “everyone’s fed up”.

“It’s getting beyond a joke for a small country town,” 81-year-old Hainsworth said.

“You’ve got people who are trying to do three-point turns, they’re standing in the middle of the road taking photographs, they’re leaving their rubbish.”

Adding to locals’ concerns is a perception that all these visitors simply show up, snap their selfies and then drive on – without spending any money in the area.

Deputy mayor and local business owner Melissa Matters said the financial impact was mixed, with some businesses doing quite well out of Tasman Drive’s fame.

She said that while many residents had moved down from Sydney seeking a quiet life, Gerringong was hardly a stranger to outsiders.

“We’ve always been about tourism here,” she told the SCMP.