9 ways to experience Sydney's great outdoors, from foraging to harbour kayaking

There are plenty of opportunities for unusual activities in the coastal city of Sydney, from diving in sheltered bays to look for seahorses to kayaking trips across that famous harbour, with the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in sight. We look at nine ways to have a mini-adventure in the capital of New South Wales.

1. Take a walk on Gadigal Country

Before James Cook sailed into the harbour, Sydney was known as Warrane to the Gadigal people who’d lived here for generations. A touch of ochre paint on your hand welcomes you to an enlightening Gadigal-led walk through The Rocks neighbourhood, passing beneath Sydney Harbour Bridge while learning about Aboriginal creationist stories, traditional meeting sites and fishing culture. The two-mile walking tour looks forwards as well as back, sharing ancient knowledge alongside insights into Sydney’s modern Aboriginal culture. A$99 (£50).

2. Forage along the seashore

Wild food advocate Diego Bonetto grew up collecting nettles and mulberries at his family’s dairy farm in Piedmont, Italy. Since emigrating to Australia in the 1990s, Bonetto — nicknamed ‘The Weedy One’ — has become a local foraging legend, collaborating with chefs and environmentalists to promote Sydney’s natural bounty. Join Bonetto for a three-hour workshop walking from Gordons Bay to Clovelly’s Shark Point along the city’s eastern coastline, identifying and tasting wild ingredients like golden kelp, beach mustard and the ubiquitous golden sowthistle. A$60 (£30).

3. Summit Sydney Harbour Bridge

Pull on a jumpsuit and latch your carabiner to the rail, then climb 1,332 steps to the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge’s upper arch. BridgeClimb Sydney has been leading visitors up the ‘Coathanger’, as locals call it, since 1998, and has recently introduced its new Burrawa Aboriginal Climb. With traffic rumbling below and the Opera House’s sails gleaming in the near distance, your First Nations guide will walk you through the views from an Aboriginal perspective, explaining the origins of familiar places like the waterfront Barangaroo district and Bennelong Point, home to the Sydney Opera House. A$364 (£187).

4. Eat your way through Newtown

When post-First World War migrants settled in a sleepy enclave of southern Sydney, they couldn’t have predicted it’d become the art-splashed centre of Sydney’s student life, a district of vintage shops, theatres and eclectic eateries. Local Sauce leads a street art and food walking tour through Newtown, sampling Egyptian, Japanese and Turkish food and culminating with a tasting paddle at a brewery where you can ponder what makes cuisine ‘Australian’ today. Local Sauce also runs a self-guided neighbourhood walk celebrating street art by female muralists. A$75 (£38).

5. Kayak through the Harbour

Sydney’s iconic harbour is one of the most biodiverse in the world, home to nearly 3,000 marine species including seahorses, seals and cuttlefish. Two hundred years of urbanisation have degraded the water quality but innovative conservation projects are helping to restore its habitats. Join an eco-focused two-hour paddle through the harbour, visiting mangrove nurseries, a living seawall designed to support underwater life, and Bruce, a shark-shaped rubbish collection unit powered by the sun. Sydney by Kayak donates a portion from every seat booked to conservation projects. A$125 (£65).

6. Sail into history at Goat Island

Cast adrift in the middle of the city’s harbour, Goat Island has, at varying times, been home to convicts, a gunpowder depot, police station, shipyard and film set, to name but a few. Step onto a historic wooden tall ship and unfurl the sails for a three-hour guided cruise, sipping on sparkling wine as you sail past some of the city’s ritziest waterfront suburbs, including Kirribilli where the prime minister lives. After reaching the island, disembark for a historical walking tour covering the island’s colonial past as well as its importance to the Aboriginal Gadigal people. A$119 (£60).

7. Check in at the Seahorse Hotel

Sydney Harbour’s many sheltered bays and coves are a haven for some of its smaller residents, such as octopus, anglerfish, crabs and the perpetually grumpy-looking frogfish. In July 2024, the Sydney Institute of Marine Science released hundreds of juvenile White’s seahorses at Chowder Bay. Dive Centre Manly offers guided shore dives to multiple spots in the harbour and around Manly, including Chowder Bay. When conditions are right, you can observe the endangered seahorses hanging out at specially designed wire shelters known affectionately as ‘seahorse hotels’.

8. Tour an oyster farm

At the convergence of the Pittwater and Hawkesbury rivers, Australia’s native Akoya oysters are grown and harvested in a protected estuary at Sydney’s only pearl farm. Strap yourself into one of Sydney Seaplanes’ classic Cessna Caravan amphibious planes, which were originally designed to carry mail, and speed along Sydney Harbour before launching into the air for views over the harbour bridge and opera house. After a 20-minute voyage, you’ll arrive at Broken Bay Pearl Farm’s ‘shellar door’ to learn about oyster farming, pearl cultivation and grading, and graze on both Sydney rock and Akoya oysters.

9. Join a mail run on the Hawkesbury River

Winding and remote, the Hawkesbury River has long been popular with artists and writers looking for solitude, and riverfront homes have been passed down through the generations. For more than 100 years, the Riverboat Postman has been dutifully delivering mail (and the odd bottle of rum) to these isolated residences, a tradition that’s continued today and now doubles as a pleasure cruise. Board a catamaran for a three-hour return journey past mangroves, shipwrecks and secluded islands that once housed mental asylums, occasionally stopping to drop the mail into letter boxes or hang a bag of parcels on a hook.