Bushland, islands, gun emplacements and rock engravings, scattered around a working harbour and reached by ferry.
The national park is not one place but a scatter of headlands, islands and foreshore reserves around the harbour — the fragments that were never built on, mostly because the military held them.
The result is that you can be in genuine bushland, hearing kookaburras, twenty minutes from the CBD.
South Head
From Watsons Bay, reached by ferry, the South Head Heritage Trail runs out to the harbour entrance past the red-and-white Hornby Lighthouse of 1858 and gun emplacements from the 1890s. About a kilometre, easy, spectacular.
The Gap, nearby, is a sea cliff with a long and sad association with suicide; there are barriers and crisis phones, and it is worth knowing before arriving.
Camp Cove and Lady Bay are small harbour beaches on the way.
North Head
From Manly, the Fairfax Walk loops around the clifftop with the best view back through the heads into the harbour. There are Second World War gun emplacements, tunnels, and the North Head Sanctuary with rare eastern suburbs banksia scrub and, with luck, little penguins offshore.
Q Station, the former quarantine station, is on the harbour side.
The Hermitage Foreshore
From Nielsen Park at Vaucluse, 1.8 kilometres along the water through bush, past Milk Beach and Queens Beach. Nielsen Park’s Shark Beach has a netted swimming enclosure and is one of the best harbour swims.
Nearby, Vaucluse House, an 1803 gothic-revival estate open as a museum.
The islands
Shark Island, Clark Island, Rodd Island and Goat Island are all part of the park, reachable by ferry or water taxi with a landing fee, and can be booked for picnics. Shark Island is the easiest and has a lawn, shade and a full harbour panorama.
Cockatoo Island is managed separately.
Aboriginal sites
The sandstone around the harbour carries rock engravings — figures of fish, whales, people and ancestral beings — cut into the flat rock platforms. Several are within the park, including at Grotto Point and on North Head.
They are fragile and many locations are not publicised. Where they are marked, stay on the boardwalk and do not walk on them.
Practicalities
Most walks are free; island landings and some sites charge.
Take water, a hat and sunscreen. There is little shade on the headland tracks and the UV is extreme.
Snakes exist in the bushland and are not a realistic concern if you stay on the path.
