An irregularly shaped suburb, Cardiff is home to two government primary schools, a Catholic primary school and a government high school. Like most major suburbs in Lake Macquarie, it has its own commercial centre with a post office, pub (hotel), real estate agencies, take-away shops, a video store, tattoo studio, two opportunity stores, numerous hairdressers and two supermarkets.

The local police station no longer provides counter services, having been converted into a centre for Highway Patrol officers in around 1998.

The first grant to a white settler in the Cardiff area was a parcel of 2,560 acres (10.4 km²) to George Weller in 1833, stretching west of the current Macquarie Road to Argenton and Cockle Creek.

Other selections were taken up by individual settlers from 1862 to the east of the Weller grant. The locality became known as Winding Creek after the stream which wound its way from south-east to north-west across the central valley of the area.

In the latter part of the 19th Century two factors attracted people to the Winding Creek area.

One was coal mining, with the Lymington (1882) and South Wallsend (1884, later renamed Cardiff) collieries both starting production in the vicinity of the current Cardiff South.

The other was the decision to construct the Sydney to Newcastle railway, which led to a navvies camp being established at Winding Creek in 1883, and work continuing through most of the rest of the decade.

The line originally ran close to current Myall Rd, however the gradient from Cardiff up to Tickhole Tunnel proved too steep for the trains of the period, and the line was relocated to the present position a few years after it was opened.

For a short period in the 1880s Lymington became the popular name for the whole Cardiff area, supplanting Winding Creek, however it fell foul of the postal authorities, because of its similarity to another, established locality name. There were a number of Welsh settlers living in the area, and on the suggestion of one of them, James Edwards, the name Cardiff was chosen after the capital of Wales. It was officially adopted in 1889.

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