A ferry ride through the middle of the harbour to a beach town with surf on one side and calm water on the other.
Manly sits on a narrow neck of land between the harbour and the ocean, seven nautical miles from Circular Quay, and the journey there is the point as much as the destination.
Governor Phillip named it in 1788 after the “manly behaviour” of the Aboriginal men he met on the beach — the Gayemagal people. He was speared in the shoulder at the same place in 1790, in an incident historians generally read as a ritual payback rather than an ambush, and he ordered no reprisal.
The ferry
The F1 from Circular Quay takes about half an hour on the traditional Freshwater-class ferries and crosses open water at the harbour heads, where it can get genuinely rough in a swell. Faster catamarans also run.
On an Opal card the fare is a normal ferry fare — a few dollars, capped daily and weekly — which makes it dramatically cheaper than any harbour cruise for a broadly similar route. This is the single best-value thing a visitor can do in Sydney.
Sit on the right leaving Circular Quay for the Opera House and Bridge.
The town
From the wharf, The Corso runs a few hundred metres across the neck to the ocean beach — pedestrianised, lined with shops and pubs, and thoroughly commercial.
Manly Beach faces the Pacific with Norfolk Island pines along the front. It is a serious surf beach and was where surfboard riding was introduced to Australia by Duke Kahanamoku in 1914 — at Freshwater, just north.
Shelly Beach, a fifteen-minute walk south around the headland, is small, sheltered, north-facing and part of a marine reserve, which makes it the best snorkelling close to the city — blue gropers, wrasse, rays and occasionally a turtle.
North Head
The headland south of the town is part of Sydney Harbour National Park, with clifftop walks, gun emplacements and the best view back into the harbour from the ocean side.
Q Station, the former quarantine station, operated from 1832 to 1984, holding arriving ships’ passengers with suspected infectious disease. Thousands passed through and around 570 are buried there. It runs history and ghost tours, and is now also a hotel.
Practicalities
Ferries run frequently until late. The last one back is well after midnight at weekends.
The Manly Scenic Walkway runs 10 kilometres west along the harbour foreshore to Spit Bridge — four hours, bush and beaches, and one of the best urban walks in Australia.
More Landmarks
Sydney Opera House
A building that took sixteen years, ten times its budget and its architect's career, and is worth every part of that.
Sydney Harbour Bridge
Fifty-three thousand tonnes of steel, six million rivets, and three quite different ways to get on top of it.
Bondi Beach
A kilometre of sand, a surf club that invented lifesaving, and a coastal walk that is better than the beach.