Beaches North of Sydney

Head To The Beaches North of Sydney

We found Sydney to be a city surrounded by water. We spent several days touring around Sydney by water to see the city sights. One of our first day trips was to head to the beaches north of Sydney.

From Circular Quay in the Sydney harbour, you can catch a ferry out to Manly Wharf. We were told that we wanted the commuter ferry and not the higher priced, high speed ferry to Manly. This was the furthest distance the commuter ferries would go. And we could use our Opal transit pass and have this trip be covered under our maximum day rate cap.

It was a nice trip up the coast for about 30 minutes. As we left the city behind, the view changed from city to country.

Manly Beach

Manly Beach was the first of the beaches north of Sydney on our list for the day. Getting off at Manly Wharf, we met our brother-in-law Jim. He was going to be our local tour guide for the afternoon as we explored the beaches north of Sydney.

We stopped to admire the beach and the waves rolling in. In this harbour you can find the Manly SeaLife Sanctuary. You can visit just this site or get a multi-attraction pass with your Sea Life Sydney Aquarium pass from Darling Harbour.

Jim headed us away from the wharf towards the “real” beach on the other bay. He noted that tourists often mistakenly think that the beach at the wharf is what you took the ferry for! We wandered through the touristy beach town to arrive at a much calmer beach.

On our walk back to the car, we stopped at a scuba shop to ask about what scuba dives might be available in the coming week. We got excited when we thought we heard that we could dive with whale sharks only to find out that we all had heard wrong. This was not the season for whale sharks. We would ultimately end up not diving from the beaches north of Sydney, but would wait to scuba in Cairns at the Great Barrier Reef.

Beaches At Every Stop Heading North

Jim took us for a meandering drive up the coast to give us a view of various beaches north of Sydney. The beach closest to where he and David’s sister lived was the Mona Vale Beach. There were signs all over saying that this beach was closed due to rough waters but we did see a few hearty souls that were ignoring the signs. The crashing waves were hard to resist for the surfers that seemed to be everywhere.

We stopped for lunch at the Newport Arms Hotel, grabbing seats on the patio with views of Scotland Island behind us. When David’s family had first settled in the Sydney area, they had lived on Scotland Island in the Pittwater area.

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We had enjoyed our tour of the beaches north of Sydney. You could find beaches to swim in or great beaches for surfing almost every time we stopped along the shore. On another day, we would do a day trip south towards the ocean to see Bondi Beach. While we only hit a few of the beaches north of Sydney, it was enough to know we would need another trip to see them all.

Did you visit the beaches north of Sydney? Do you have a favourite beach north of Sydney that we missed?

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