The Land Down Under - Sydney

March 9-15, 2023

Good day family and friends, or should I say mates,

I arrived in Sydney on the night of March 9 after my solo travels on the North Island of New Zealand. For my itinerary, I had a rough idea that I wanted to go north along the east coast of Australia and then fly to Melbourne, in the southeast part of the continent; there were only a few locations I knew I wanted to visit, like the Whitsunday Islands and the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne, but the rest of the agenda was up in the air. Sydney was a good place to start since it’s the largest city and there are several hot attractions in the city.

The public transit in the city is excellent, and I was able to get from the airport to my hostel, The Village in Bondi Beach, just using my credit card to tap on and off a train and then a bus. I dropped my bags off and went to the nearby McDonald’s for a dinner, since it was late and I didn’t want to cook.

The next morning I got up relatively early to beat the crowds out to surf. I rented a board for a couple hours and started surfing at the southern part of Bondi Beach, which was intimidating at first. It’s a beach break and the waves were crashing really close to shore so it was difficult to get out. Almost everyone else was on short boards and I wasn’t sure if I was even able to make it out on my longer, bigger funboard. After a few minutes, I saw a guy on a longboard start paddling out. I waited for the waves to calm down and followed him out, successfully getting beyond the waves. The surf report had said the waves were going to be 1-2 feet, but they were much bigger. I hadn’t been consistently surfing in Hawai'i since the end of October, so I was definitely rusty.

I also didn’t know how local the spot was, so I was pretty cautious about “taking” anyone’s waves. (In surf culture, there’s an etiquette about who gets to take a wave, since often there are more surfers interested in a wave than there is space on the wave. It theoretically has to do with positioning, but localism and status can de facto play into the etiquette.) I let many decent waves pass me by before feeling comfortable enough to paddle for some waves. I had many near misses, but I caught a couple, including a nice wave breaking to the right where I was up for a few seconds before losing my balance trying to turn. The water was a bit chilly and I was one of the few surfers without a wetsuit, so I got out after an hour or two.

I walked up to the northern part of the beach to warm up and went back in for another hour. The northern part was much more beginner friendly with smaller waves crashing right on the beach. It was pretty crowded, so I only caught one or two waves and rode them into the shore. It wasn’t my best session from a technical standpoint, but it was really fun to get back out in the water and a good way to scrape some of the rust off after not having gone in a while.

After surfing, I met Mel on Bondi Beach and we hung out there for an hour before deciding we’d had too much sun. We bought groceries and made a late lunch at my hostel (Mel was staying with her friend Amy that came out to Fiji). After eating, we walked a small section of the famous Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk. Mel had to head back to town, and I kept walking to Bronte Beach, where there was a swimming pool by the ocean. The pool was right by the rocks where the waves crashed, so saltwater from the ocean naturally flowed in and out of the pool. There was lots going on with kids playing around, boys jumping from the cliffs above, people swimming laps, and friends just hanging out. The pool looked like a chlorinated pool so it was kind of shocking to go in and have it be saltwater. The rocks around the pool were cool and the views of the ocean and cliffs were stunning. I was a big fan of this type of pool.

In the evening, I went to Mel’s friend Amy’s place for a birthday party. Some of Amy’s friends were local and helpfully gave us suggestions on places to visit and those to avoid. After hors d’oeuvres, the group went to a fancy restaurant for some drinks and then another bar for dancing. It seemed like Bondi was a popular area for going out and it was a decently fun night.

The next day I picked up coffees and a croissant from a cute café/bookstore and Mel and I did the full Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk. We took our time and made a day out of it, stopping at many of the gorgeous beaches along the way. Our first stop was Tamarama Beach to watch people play beach volleyball and a game that I’d best describe as soccer volleyball, which was like normal volleyball except the players didn’t use their arms and the net was a bit lower. The players were amazing and had some impressive rallies that I didn’t expect.

We were walking around midday and March is like late summer/early fall for Australia, so it was hot and sunny. We broke up the walk and cooled off by swimming in the Bronte pool.

We pushed on from there to make it to Coogee, the beach at the end of the walk, where we treated ourselves to fish and chips for lunch. Mel had the start of an allergic reaction from some cross contamination, but luckily the reaction went nowhere and she was fine. After sitting in the shade, we hung out at Coogee near some volleyball nets and peppered. We tried to get a game on one of the nets but the locals weren’t the most inviting and they were part of a club, so we watched instead.

We stopped at Clovelly Beach, between Coogee and Bronte, on the way back for a quick dip and then walked the rest of the way back to Bondi. The swimming area was pretty shallow and rocky so we floated on our backs to avoid scratching our feet on the bottom. It wasn’t as nice as the Bronte pool, but it was nice to swim in the open ocean.

We’d been considering surfing after the walk, but it took longer than expected and the conditions didn’t look great at the end of the day so we passed. We gathered our stuff and took the bus to The Village in Surry Hills, which was a lot nicer than The Village in Bondi Beach.

The next day we slept in and made breakfast bowls at the hostel. We chilled there until 11am, when the hostel served pancakes and orange juice for free. Many hostels have events throughout the week to encourage people to stay and show up, such as free or discounted food and drinks, ping pong tournaments, bar crawls, and more. We’d taken advantage of some of these hostel offerings in previous places, and they were nice activities to do, especially if we weren’t rushing to be somewhere or didn’t have a strong idea of what to do.

Around noon, we took the bus to downtown Sydney and walked around the Sydney Botanical Gardens. The gardens were in the downtown area, right by the main tourist attractions, and they provided a quiet, green area in the middle of the hustle and bustle.

After seeing the gardens, we took a short walk to the Sydney Opera House. It was free admission, which was nice, but we didn’t get to see much of the interior because it was closed for an event. I still appreciated its unique architecture from the outside.

We then walked through some street markets on the way to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We walked across it and enjoyed views of the city, bay, and opera house. One of the popular tourist activities is to climb the bridge (while strapped in and with a guide). It looked like it would have been decently fun, but we got solid views from walking on the bridge at the same level as the cars, and I don’t know if it would have been that much better to climb up on the most elevated parts of the bridge. I’m glad we passed on this one because I don’t think it was worth it for the price.

On the other side of the bay, we took the train back to the hostel and got groceries for a late lunch/early dinner. We were feeling tired so we chilled in our room for an hour before going to Prince Alfred Park across the street to get some fresh air and use the park gym. We made more food back at the hostel and then went into Surry Hills to look for live music. It was almost 10pm on a Sunday, though, so everything was closed and we went to bed instead.

The next day was low-key. I did some logistics for Gold Coast, our next stop up the east coast, and then went for a run in the early afternoon. I went to Moore and Centennial Parks and they were open green areas, but nothing special; I was much more impressed by the beaches of Sydney than the parks. It still felt good to run, since I hadn’t in a while, and my legs were sore in a great way.

In the afternoon we went to the Strawberry Hills Hotel and Shakespeare Hotel in the Surry Hills neighborhood for happy hour drinks. The first place was cute and the second was very local. We had a couple rounds before going to the movie theatre to watch “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”. We snuck in some snacks and a bottle of wine and the movie was solid, so it was a fun date night.

For our final full day in Sydney we got up early, made breakfast and food for the day, and caught the 6:53am train to Blue Mountains National Park. The park is about 1.5-2 hours west of Sydney and it’s known for hiking trails, sandstone cliffs, and charming mountain towns. We got off in Katoomba, where the famous Three Sisters viewpoint and many of the trails are. Unfortunately, the park was surrounded by possibly the densest fog I’ve ever seen; visibility would likely have been better flying through clouds on a plane.

(It cleared up just slightly for less than five minutes in the afternoon.)

It was too bad not to be able to see any of the views, but we did some of the hikes and enjoyed the little we could see. We explored in Katoomba for a few hours before catching a bus to a nearby town, Wentworth Falls. The waterfall there was awesome because it fell off the side of the earth; it was like a normal waterfall with a drop of 10 feet or so, but the water from the lower pool then went into a waterfall that went straight off a cliff and disappeared into the valley.

It started to rain in the afternoon and we felt like we’d seen enough of the park given how foggy it was, so we made our way to the train station and rode back to Sydney. At the hostel, we made a fancy and delicious pasta dinner with cheesy garlic bread.

Our flight on March 15 to Gold Coast was at 12:30pm so we made a breakfast and then took the train to the airport. I enjoyed Sydney. The city part was cool; the opera house was a unique building, there were some parks throughout the city, and Surry Hills had a cute restaurant and bar scene. The beaches stole the show for me, though. Bondi, Tamarama, Bronte, Clovelly, and Coogee (all the main ones on the Bondi to Coogee walk) were awesome. The beaches were so wide, with the distance between the water and the end of the sand being over 50 meters at many points. Even with crowds on a beautiful Saturday, there was enough space at Bondi for everyone to have their own space. Similarly, other beaches could handle the crowds and it was so cool to see everyone doing their own thing: people were surfing, playing beach volleyball and soccer, listening to music, barbecuing, tossing a frisbee, running, swimming in the open ocean, and more. It felt similar to Hawai’i in how much activity was going on at the beach. The beaches between Bondi and Coogee felt like the place I could most see myself living out of all the places on my travels so far. I’d like to see the other more remote beaches around Sydney like Manly Beach and Palm Beach next time I visit because I’ve heard they have much of the same beauty with less of the crowds. Thanks for reading, all!