Take a walk on the wild side in Sydney Harbour National Park
A harbourside hike takes in urban wilderness and links to the land’s ancestral past.
Nothing can be conceived more
picturesque than … this extraordinary harbour. The land on all sides is high and covered with an exuberance of trees.
Toward the water, craggy rocks and wonderful declivities are everywhere to be seen.”
Daniel Southwell, midshipman aboard HMS Sirius.
Lieutenant Southwell’s words echo in my head during a three-day hike along the 80km coastal Bondi to Manly Walk. He wrote them as the First Fleet sailed into Port Jackson in 1788 but they’re still vivid and relevant today.
Almost half the trail (more than 35kms) meanders through protected landscapes within the Sydney Harbour National Park, offering frequent reminders that Australia’s largest metropolis is still wild – and exuberant – at heart.
Despite having lived in Sydney for more than a decade, during which I thought I’d explored the harbour quite thoroughly by foot and kayak, I’m constantly surprised by the extent of urban wilderness and links to the land’s ancestral past, even in its most privileged pockets.
The first surprise lies on the Ben Buckler bluff, minutes after I set off from the walk’s official start at the Bondi Beach lifeguard tower. After a short tramp across the golf course (perfectly legal, a local man assures me) I stand at the edge of the escarpment marvelling at a patch of exposed sandstone engraved with the images of a whale, a shark and what looks like a hybrid human-lizard figure. It’s faintly astonishing and also wonderful to find this timeless Eora Nations art enduring above Australia’s most famous and fashionable beach.
On the Hermitage Foreshore Track, which traces the ragged coast below Vaucluse’s extravagant estates, a stone path laced with fig roots leads to a stand of she-oaks found nowhere else on Earth. Again, it’s astonishing that something so rare clings to life in sight of the Sydney Opera House.
The track also takes me through tunnels of witch-fingered angophoras between Taronga and Bradleys Head, where diamond pythons and water dragons, black-bellied swamp snakes and long-nosed bandicoots abide just a few kilometres from CBD skyscrapers.
The Bondi to Manly Walk officially opened in December 2019, uniting existing coastal and harbour paths, and the odd suburban street, into one epic urban hike. Most great city walks draw walkers away from metropolitan areas and into the wild; I’m thinking Cape Town, Hong Kong, Los Angeles. The magic power of the Bondi to Manly is that it never leaves the city yet weaves between the developed and natural worlds, between humans and animals, sea and earth, sunlight and shade, from new to old to ancient.
Hikers can take as long as they wish to complete the challenge (see the website for suggested itineraries and timings). I opted for three days split into sections of roughly 29km, 27km and 24km, but wouldn’t recommend rushing it. Partly due to the toll on feet and body but mostly because it doesn’t allow anywhere near enough time to swim at every attractive beach, linger at harbourside eateries along the way or simply revel in the ravishing scenery.
The itinerary has something for everyone. For architecture and property buffs it’s an invitation to some of Sydney’s finest residential enclaves, from the waterfront palaces of Point Piper to the majestic Arts & Crafts mansions at Cremorne Point. You can also poke around colonial piles such as Vaucluse House with its tea rooms, history museum and original gardens, and the Italianate Strickland House, now a public park with a slip of beach and an expansive harbour outlook. The trail also goes right by the Sydney Opera House, and across the Harbour Bridge.
It’s a journey into the past, via Australia’s oldest lighthouse (Macquarie Lighthouse), Sydney’s worst maritime tragedy (the wreck of the Dunbar at South Head) and fascinating military strongholds now open to the public and managed by the Harbour Trust.
At Headland Park at Mosman, the engaging volunteer guides Robyn and Tony Lewis lead me around the Georges Head fortifications and former World War I military hospital. We inspect the cannons installed to defend the inner harbour (it took 250 men three months to roll the guns here up Military Road), the tunnels once used to store gunpowder and officers’ wine, and the small but perfectly formed fort carved into the hill after the Crimean War, its sloped walls designed to deflect cannonballs. “It’s a lovely spot for weddings,” Tony assures me.
First Nations legacies such as the engravings at Bondi, and more at Grotto Point on Dobroyd Head, lure walkers even further back in time, pre-Sydney. There’s Indigenous rock art at Reef Beach in Balgowlah Heights and, incredibly, at the southern end of exclusive Balmoral Beach there’s a large cave and kitchen midden that’s been carbon-dated to more than 3200 years old.
Balmoral is one of many beaches cached like treasures along the route. Besides its famous bookends, there’s lovely Camp Cove (where Captain Arthur Phillip first stepped ashore at Port Jackson, presumably with Southwell in tow), and the popular Shark Beach at Nielsen Park, where I can’t resist the siren call of golden sand and crystal waters on a 26C autumn day. Hands down, my top swim of the season.
After careful investigation I have to concede the harbour’s finest beaches are on the north shore, especially those like Store and Collins – accessible only by foot or boat. Clontarf’s Castle Rock is another, a delicious slice of honeycomb sand and Maldivian blue waters that’s gloriously deserted midweek.
The star attraction of the Bondi to Manly Walk is nature’s abundance. Against a backdrop of Sydney’s bedrock sandstone, whose flamboyant forms Southwell fancied as “grand seats, superb palaces, and sumptuous pavilions”, the vegetation varies from subtropical glades and mannered gardens to the exposed ruggedness of North Head, where grass trees and wizened old banksias fringe reedy swamps.
There are many pretty parks en route for rest and enrichment, from Arthur McElhone Reserve in Elizabeth Bay, with its koi pond and Port Jackson panoramas, to Cremorne Reserve’s winning combination of bushland, lush lawns and rocky viewing platforms above a sparkling Emerald City.
The walk’s symbol is Buriburi, the humpback whale, but signage is patchy in parts (organisers say they’re fixing this) so it’s best to use the dynamic map on the B2M app to keep tabs on where you’re heading.
I’m constantly getting lost but this feels more like a feature than a flaw because there’s always something to discover. Like the radio antenna anchored to the cliff-face at Dover Heights, a reminder that this was once “one of the most important radio astronomy sites in the world” where the CSIRO collected radio waves from galaxies many millions of light years away. And Curlew Camp at Sirius Cove in Mosman, where Australian Impressionists including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder established an artists’ retreat at the end of the 19th century. At its peak there were living quarters, a dining hall and a billiards tent. Today all that remains are shimmering views across Sirius Cove and a coral tree, one of two planted by Streeton more than a century ago.
After the wildness of North Head it is, frankly, a disappointment to emerge back into a world of paved roads and posh apartments at the end of my Sydney pilgrimage. I have a sudden and overwhelming urge to turn heel and plunge back into the unknown, but sadly have to head back to town.
On the ferry from Manly, I feel like I’m seeing parts of the harbour city properly for the first time, but also that there are still many more secrets waiting to be discovered. Next time.
Kendall Hill was a guest of Destination NSW
visitnsw.com
bonditomanly.com
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In the know
With luck and forward planning it’s possible to stay entirely beside the harbour, and the walking track, in smartly renovated National Parks and Wildlife Service cottages at Vaucluse, Middle Head and the North Head Quarantine Station (now Q Station). Or you could stay in the CBD and use the city’s excellent ferry network to get to and from each day’s adventure.
The indulgent option is to reward yourself at the end of the day with fancy hotel stays. I spend the night before starting the walk at the funky, motel-style QT Bondi and in the morning just grab my pack and stroll two blocks to reach the start point.
That night I stagger into the polite surrounds of Spicers Potts Point, where kind staff ignore my rumpled state and hand me the keys to the Victoria Suite. Its deep bath and king bed are deeply restorative after a 30km trek. On day two I check into Mosman’s 26-room Albert Hotel, a stately 19th century pile with modern extension. My basement room has a stone-walled courtyard, a morning kookaburra chorus, and thick, cushioning carpets that are heaven under a hiker’s feet.
Book tours online at the Harbour Trust.
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