I am a city girl, no denying it. I’m a sucker for an artisan product, a graffiti mural covering a building gable, a quirky signage typeface or an obscure piece of art. I love soaking up cities and all they have to offer, and for me there is nothing better than to wander in the neighbourhoods, eating, drinking and getting pulled into the local vibe. Which is why Sydney is a great place for me to visit, and also why this won’t be the most touristy tourist post you’re likely to read about Sydney. So if you’re looking for Sydney’s top 10 kids attractions, you should probably look elsewhere…
Australia is a country that I’ve always been interested in but it’s never had the draw for me that it seems to for lots of other young Brits. I’ve heard good and bad about it and I have to say it didn’t disappoint. I didn’t have a lot of expectation, apart from beaches and sunshine (check!) so was really thrilled to discover that beyond the weather, Sydney and NSW has a lot to offer. The most surprising thing for me was how much I fell in love with the architecture. Australia is obviously a really young country, but I was really intrigued with the architecture which had a real art deco feel to it. A lot seemed to be built turn of the century, so the result is a city with some beautiful buildings that are often brightly painted and really come to life in the Aussie sun. The food is another Australian highlight, with delicious fresh produce, independent producers and a wide array of cuisines to choose from.
Accommodation & Transport: In Australia, we stayed with friends all but one night, and we hired a car from Hertz which got us around apart from a couple of ferry trips. So not much to report on accommodation and transport. All I will say is that if you are planning to take ferries, check and double check the operators and timetables, as we bought a return ticket from Watsons Bay to Circular Quay and then when we returned the operator we’d used had run their last service for the day, so we had to get another that wouldn’t accept that ticket. Oh, one more watch out is the toll roads. NSW has a lot of toll roads without pay booths, so payment is done online with number plate recognition. When we saw this we had no idea how/where to pay so got online and finally figured it out. Then we realised that our car rental included a package for daily tolls. The money was deducted and we’re still chasing for a refund. Ask your can rental company when you pick up about this.
Baby facilities & breastfeeding: Australia is certainly baby friendly, breastfeeding in public is common and very acceptable, most places we went were buggy accessible including the ferries into and out of the CBD, and loads of shops with baby products and food. The one thing that was disappointing however, and super surprising, was how many restaurants did not have baby change facilities. Maybe they are especially good at this in the UK but I would expect them anywhere a family might eat and often they were absent. By contrast the Airport in Sydney was well-equipped with parents rooms.
A few Aussie baby brands that were must visits for me: Bonds & Seed Heritage. Seed Heritage has the most beautiful baby and kid clothes and Bonds is more functional basics, their wondersuit zipped sleepsuit being the iconic baby item I guess. Surprisingly in the UK zipped sleepsuits are hard to come by.
Agenda:
We had 4 legs to our trip: Manly, the Hunter Valley, Newcastle and Watsons Bay/Sydney proper. Over a week this was a really comfortable agenda as there wasn’t too much driving at all. If we hadn’t spent so much time catching up with friends we would have compressed the Manly/Watsons Bay/Sydney portion into a few days and added the Blue Mountains.
Day 1 at Manly Beach
Manly is home to a dear friend from school and her adorable family, so we were in safe hands for a local tour guide. Manly is part of the Northern Beaches and is a sweet, yet large, town on a perfect beach popular with locals and tourists alike. Manly is rich in the beautiful, candy-coloured art deco architecture. It’s an easy trip into Sydney by car or via ferry. There is plenty of free parking if you know where to look, we used the council car park attached to Coles which offers up to 2 hours free parking. More than enough time to grab lunch/drinks/coffee with the baby in tow. We didn’t swim, but we did do some fine eating / drinking in Manly: we started at Manly Wine which was not mega easy for baby-accessibility but we made it work and had some fine wine and apero on our first evening in Australia; Manly Wharf was a real highlight (see pics below of their excellent nachos and pizza). Our final meal in Manly was at the recently opened Salt which we suspect was still going through early teething problems. Nice spot though. We also did some shopping in Manly, we went to the Warringah mall where we visited Bonds, Target and some other big stores, it was a really nice outdoor mall. They had a great baby store, Babyography, which I think has since moved to a new location nearby.
The Boat House, Palm Beach, NSW
From Manly, we took a drive up the shore to the glorious Palm Beach. Apart from the fact that it is a stunning peninsula reached via a glorious, sun-baked, hilly and mansion-spotted drive, it is most famous for being home to the fictional town of ‘Summer Bay’ or at least some exterior shots for the national treasure that is “Home & Away”. Being a British school girl in the 1990s, H&A was an institution, and characters like Alf & Ailsa will hold a fond spot in our hearts for evermore. Now my memory is not the best, but I can’t say any of the locations looked particularly familiar to me, it is 20 years since I was a regular viewer however. In spite of that, we loved our trip up to Palm Beach, it felt so relaxing up there and we had a delicious lunch at the Boat House. Our friend told us this is a very exclusive neighbourhood, and it’s understandable why. The picture from the header on our blog was taken at Palm Beach.
Other pics (mainly food!) from Manly & the Northern Beaches
We then headed north to the Hunter Valley. Being married to a wino, sorry, winemaker, stopping by wineries where possible is an inevitable part of our holidays. Illustrated by a massive detour to a sparse part of Japan on our honeymoon…but that’s a story for another blog post! The Hunter Valley is not the foremost wine region in Australia, but it has some very reputable producers and is a typical wineland of rolling valleys creating a pleasant place to visit. We stayed at the Cypress Lakes Resort, in Pokolbin. It’s a large resort hotel known for the golf course. The accommodation is arranged as self-contained and well-equipped lodges. There was one pool open which looked nice but we didn’t take a dip, we had a sandwich in the bar as a late lunch which was fine, but rather disappointed by the limited menu during the day as the resort is large without alternate dining options nearby. We had a 2 bedroom lodge which was great so Isobel could have a room to herself to sleep peacefully and we could relax without fear of disturbing her. The rooms are apparently being refurbished which will help a lot, they did feel fairly tired. Our biggest complaint was that our wifi connection was very poor and kept going out for extended periods. Apparently you can often spot kangaroos on the golf course, which many lodges look onto. We were sad to not have had that sighting. Isobel and I took a break as Sergio visited Brokenwood, and we together visited De Bortoli and had a delicious tasting. It was a brief stop off, we found a gem of a brewery pub on our way out for a quick lunch stop – Old Brickworks at Potters. I don’t think you’d need much more than a couple of days in the Hunter. After the Hunter Valley we drove around an hour over to Newcastle on the East Coast where we visited friends. Newcastle is an industrial town a couple of hours north of Sydney, with the more glorious, picture perfect beaches. We didn’t explore too much in Newcastle as it really was just a catch up, but enough to see that the city has worked hard to develop a dining/shopping centre and waterfront downtown that is lovely and makes the most of the glorious weather. It puts the UK industrial cities to shame!
Pics from Hunter Valley
From Newcastle we drove back down the coast a couple of hours into Sydney proper. It
Gelato Messina
was exciting to finally see the great city, and we entered driving over the Harbour Bridge. I tried to take a video of driving into the city but it was punctuated by Isobel screaming in the backseat as she has a limited threshold of tolerance for the car seat, sigh. We
Surry Hills, Sydney
wanted to spend a couple of hours soaking up the city so on our friends recommendation headed for Surry Hills and specifically, Gelato Messina. It was worth the visit, delicious amazing ice cream. We sat in a park with the baby, and were surrounded by other mothers. It was very baby-friendly and relaxing. The shops and cafes were great also on Crown Street. We loved Chilli Coral with beautiful gift/homeware/kid products many of which are from Australian designers and had a great cup of coffee from Cup Half Full. The following day we explored the CBD (it cracks me up btw that Aussies and kiwis use CBD all the time, it’s a term I only used prior to this in geography class at school). We arrived in the CBD via a commuter ferry, well comparing that to squeezing into an overheated carriage on the Northern line and being stuck in a sweaty bankers armpit, I can’t see why Australians want to make the move over
Isobel arriving in Sydney
to London. The ferry ride was so beautiful, and there’s a bar so on the way back you can drink. In a ferry. In the sunshine!! We arrived at Circular Quay and did the tourist trail, the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, and the Rocks. It was great to see all of the iconic sights. We had a snack in the Opera Kitchen (which was not well baby-equipped as no high chairs) and then met some friends for lunch at a pub in the Rocks. Our final day in the city we headed to Darling Harbour, which was decorated for the Chinese New Year and visited Bondi to have brunch with some other friends at Lamrock Café which was great but again no baby change. In fact Bondi was not what I was expecting and not our favourite neighbourhood in Sydney. There was a tonne of construction at the beach which didn’t help.
Whilst in Sydney we stayed in the paradise that is Watson’s Bay with another friend. The suburbs in Sydney really do have their own unique personalities and this place is a haven
Doyles on the Beach, Watsons Bay
of peace and serenity, so beautiful, so quiet.
Cockatoo in Watsons Bay
Although it does feel a bit more detached from the town proper and it’s a trek to a supermarket etc. It is a wonderful place to visit, and we enjoyed eating at Doyles, the famous fish restaurant on the beach. It wasn’t cheap however. We did a hike up the Gap and got just stunning views over Sydney. I don’t know how abundant or accessible accommodation is in Watson’s Bay, but it’s absolutely a place I would recommend staying as the ferry makes it very easy to get into the CBD.
Pictures from Watson’s Bay
Our final stop in NSW on a very sticky February day, was Taronga Zoo. The zoo is set just north of the harbour on a hill overlooking the city. It has to be the most scenic giraffe enclosure I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful zoo, well laid out and with a large selection of animals to visit, with great focus on the marsupials. The Australian Walkabout area was fantastic as you walk amongst kangaroos and ostrich and get a real up close experience. We also paid for the experience to ‘meet’ a koala and have a photo taken. That was the highlight, particularly the fascinating chat with one of the world’s foremost koala experts who has hand-reared many of the koala’s in the zoo. Taronga is a great place to visit with the family.
It felt like a very action-packed week in NSW which we loved and even with the 6-month old in tow we saw and did a lot and ensured that Isobel was enjoying and getting rest as needed along the way. Can’t wait to go back when she’s older and get up the coastal road.
The Littlest Explorer 