9 things to do outdoors in Sydney

The coastal city of Sydney offers plenty of unusual activities, from diving in sheltered bays in search of seahorses to kayaking around the famous harbor, home to the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge. We look at nine ways to have a mini-adventure in the NSW capital.

1. Take a walk through the Gadigal country.

Before James Cook sailed into the harbour, Sydney was known as Warrain among the Gadigal people who lived there for several generations. The touch of ocher on your hand invites you on an educational walk, led by Gadigal, through the Rocks under Sydney Harbor Bridge, where you’ll learn about Aboriginal creationist stories, traditional meeting places and fishing culture. The two-mile walking tour looks forward and back, sharing ancient knowledge and insight into contemporary Sydney Aboriginal culture. AU$99 (£50).

2. Feed by the sea

Wild food advocate Diego Bonetto grew up picking nettles and mulberries on his family’s dairy farm in Piedmont, Italy. Since emigrating to Australia in the 1990s, Bonetto, nicknamed “The Weak”, has become a local foraging legend, working with chefs and conservationists to promote Sydney’s natural resources. Join Bonetto for a three-hour workshop walking from Gordon’s Bay to Clovelly’s Shark Point along the city’s east coast, where you can identify and taste wild ingredients such as golden kelp, beach mustard and the ubiquitous golden sow thistle. 60 Australian dollars (£30).

3. Sydney Harbor Bridge Summit

Don your overalls and clip the carabiner to the handrail, then climb the 1,332 steps to the top of the top arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. BridgeClimb Sydney has been taking visitors to ‘The Hanger’, as it’s known locally, since 1998 and recently unveiled its new Burrawa Aboriginal trail. The noise of traffic below is noisy, and in the distance the sails of the Opera House sparkle. Your Indigenous guide will take you through the views from an Aboriginal perspective, explaining the origins of familiar places such as the Barangaroo coastal area and Bennelong Point, home of the Sydney Opera House. House. AU$364 (£187).

4. Eat around Newtown

When migrants settled in the sleepy enclave in Sydney’s south after the First World War, they couldn’t have predicted that it would become the center of Sydney’s student life, an arts-filled precinct of vintage shops, theaters and eclectic eateries. Local Sauce hosts a street art and food walking tour of Newtown, sampling Egyptian, Japanese and Turkish cuisine, ending with a brewery tasting where you can reflect on what makes food “Australian” today. Local Sauce is also hosting a self-guided walk through the neighborhood highlighting the street art of female muralists. AU$75 (£38).

5. Kayak across the harbor

Sydney’s iconic harbor is one of the most biodiverse in the world, with almost 3,000 marine species including seahorses, seals and cuttlefish. Two hundred years of urbanization have degraded water quality, but innovative conservation projects are helping to restore habitat. Join an eco-friendly 2-hour sail around the harbor, visiting mangrove nurseries, a living dam designed to support underwater life, and Bruce, a solar-powered, shark-shaped garbage collection device. Sydney by Kayak donates a portion of every seat booked to environmental projects. AU$125 (£65).

6. Experience history on Goat Island.

Abandoned in the middle of the city’s harbor, Goat Island has at various times been a prison house, a gunpowder magazine, a police station, a shipyard and a film set, to name a few. Board a historic wooden sailboat and spread the sails for a three-hour guided cruise, sipping sparkling wine as you sail past the city’s most luxurious coastal suburbs, including Kirribilli, where the Prime Minister lives. Once you reach the island, disembark for a historical walking tour that explores the island’s colonial past as well as its importance to the Gadigal Aboriginal people. AU$119 (£60).

7. Check-in at the Seahorse Hotel.

Sydney Harbor’s many sheltered bays and coves are home to some of its smaller creatures, such as octopus, anglerfish, crabs and the ever-grumpy-looking frogfish. In July 2024, the Sydney Institute of Marine Science released hundreds of young White’s seahorses into Chowder Bay. Manly Dive Center offers shore dives at several locations in and around Manly Harbour, including Chowder Bay. When conditions are right, you can observe endangered seahorses in specially designed wire shelters, affectionately known as “seahorse hotels.”

8. Take a tour of an oyster farm.

At the confluence of the Pittwater and Hawkesbury Rivers, native Australian Akoya oysters are grown and harvested in the sheltered estuary of Sydney’s only pearl farm. Strap into one of Sydney Seaplanes’ classic amphibious Cessna Caravans, originally designed to carry mail, and zip along Sydney Harbor before taking to the air for views of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. After a 20-minute journey, you’ll arrive at the “shell door” of Broken Bay Pearl Farm to learn about oyster farming, pearl cultivation and grading, and admire both Sydney Rock and Akoya oysters.

9. Join the Hawkesbury River Post Run.

The winding and remote Hawkesbury River has long been popular with artists and writers seeking solitude, and riverside homes have been passed down from generation to generation. For more than 100 years, the river postman has dutifully delivered mail (and a few bottles of rum) to these isolated homes, a tradition that continues today and is now being transformed into a pleasure cruise. Board a catamaran for a three-hour return journey past mangroves, shipwrecks and secluded islands that were once mental hospitals, stopping occasionally to drop mail in mailboxes or hang a parcel bag on a hook.