Australia Guide
Around Sydney
The area around Sydney offers a taste of virtually everything you'll find in the rest of the country, with the exception of desert. There are magnificent national parks – Ku-ring-gai Chase and Royal being the best known – and native wildlife, each a mere hour's drive from the centre of town; while further north stretch endless ocean beaches, great for surfers, and more enclosed waters for safer swimming and sailing. Inland, the Blue Mountains, with three more national parks, offer isolated bushwalking and scenic viewpoints. On the way are historic colonial towns that were among the earliest foundations in the country – Sydney itself, of course, was the very first.
The commercial and industrial heart of the state of New South Wales, especially the central coastal region, is bordered by Wollongong in the south and Newcastle in the north. Both were synonymous with coal and steel, but the smokestack industries that supported them for decades are now in severe decline. This is far from an industrial wasteland, though: the heart of the coal-mining country is the Hunter Valley, northwest of Newcastle, but to visit it you'd never guess, because this is also Australia's oldest, and arguably its best-known, wine-growing region.