Sydney, Australia · Oceania

7 ideal things to do in Sydney

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked December 15, 2025

1. 01

   The Bondi to Coogee coastal walk

   Eastern beaches; buses run back from Coogee·Early morning. Check the surf report if you intend to swim on the way

   Start at Bondi and head south — Tamarama, Bronte, then the boardwalk laid along the edge of Waverley Cemetery, where Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar lie under white Carrara marble on a clifftop above the Tasman. Six kilometres, two or three hours with stops, and every headland hands you a different piece of the Pacific. Go in that direction rather than the reverse: it puts the sun behind you and delivers the ocean pools in the right order.

2. 02

   The F1 ferry to Manly

   Circular Quay to Manly, out past the Heads·Weekends and public holidays, if you want the older Freshwater-class boats

   Seven nautical miles, about half an hour, and for two or three minutes near the Heads the harbour swell turns into genuine ocean swell and the entire deck goes quiet. This is a commuter service, not a cruise, and it is priced and timetabled accordingly. Two of the older Freshwater-class vessels still work weekends and they take the chop far better than the newer wave-piercers. Sit outside going over, inside coming back, once the wind has found you.

3. 03

   Swim at the Bondi Icebergs pool

   The south end of Bondi Beach·Not Thursdays — the pool is drained and scrubbed

   Waves break straight over the wall into the lane you are swimming in. That is what an ocean pool is for, and it takes about two lengths to stop being alarming. The club was founded in 1929 by lifesavers who wanted a way to stay fit through winter, and the original membership rule demanded swimming three Sundays out of four for five years. The pool itself is open to anybody. The water in August is cold in a manner the Adriatic has never once managed.

4. 04

   Naala Badu and the Tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

   The Domain, above Woolloomooloo·Half a day. General entry costs nothing

   Naala Badu — 'seeing waters' — is the SANAA-designed north building that opened in December 2022 and close to doubled the gallery's floor area. The part that stopped me was underneath it: the Tank, a decommissioned wartime naval oil bunker converted into a black, columned gallery with the original concrete pillars left standing exactly where the navy poured them. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection is the reason to come and then the reason to come back.

5. 05

   Katoomba, the Three Sisters and Scenic World

   Blue Mountains, about two hours west by train·A full day. The cliffs cloud over by mid-afternoon in summer

   Katoomba is a two-hour train ride and then a short walk to a cliff edge with the Jamison Valley dropping out from under you and the Three Sisters standing off to the left. Scenic World runs an incline railway originally built in the 1880s to haul coal, now the steepest passenger railway going, at a gradient that pins you into the seat and rearranges your opinion of gravity. Take it down, walk the valley boardwalk through the rainforest, come back up on the cableway. The walking is the point; the machinery is the excuse.

6. 06

   The Pylon Lookout on the Sydney Harbour Bridge

   South-east pylon, entered from the bridge footway at The Rocks·Any clear day

   About two hundred steps inside the south-east pylon and you come out on top of it with the whole harbour spread out — Opera House below, ferries crossing under you, the arch running up overhead. BridgeClimb takes you higher, in a jumpsuit, on a wire, for a great deal more money and three and a half hours of your life. The pylon takes twenty minutes and a fraction of the cost. I have done both, and only one of them do I recommend to people who are not already certain they want it.

7. 07

   Cockatoo Island (Wareamah)

   Middle of Sydney Harbour; ferries from Circular Quay·A day trip, or camp overnight on the island

   Wareamah sits in the middle of the harbour and was a convict prison from 1839, then a shipyard until 1991, and it is now a World Heritage site you can walk onto for nothing off a public ferry. The Fitzroy and Sutherland dry docks are still cut down into the sandstone. Around twenty thousand people a year camp here — on grass, on an island, twenty minutes from the CBD — which is the sort of arrangement I keep failing to imagine anyone permitting on our own islands.