Sydney Walking Tours

So many layers of history:
a walking tour of Chippendale

A walk through one of Sydney’s oldest precincts where the Pugin-inspired St Benedict’s church, early Victorian terraces, a model public housing block from 1914 and the remnants of of the once dominant Tooths Brewery survive alongside some of Sydney’s best contemporary architecture, art galleries and eateries. While it has been undergoing gentrification for a decade, Chippendale escaped wholesale redevelopment in the 20th century. The newer development has been generally respectful of that surviving fabric and, in the case of Central Park, has incorporated it very well. All that means that history can be read in the layering of built heritage.

LENGTH: 2 HOURS
PLEASE NOTE: Maximum of 10 people. There are no steps and the walk is relatively easy and flat. You will receive notes beforehand to provide some historical background to the area.

point to point:
a walk around Australia’s oldest European waterfront from Bennelong Point to Millers Point

A walk from Bennelong Point, the site of the Sydney Opera House, through Circular Quay and the Rocks to Millers Point, where the Hero of Waterloo pub has been serving food and drink since 1842. You will learn about the Aboriginal people of the Harbour and the colonial and post colonial history of Australia’s oldest European waterfront . I love architectural history so there is an emphasis on the way Europeans have shaped this part of Sydney with civic and domestic buildings. So along the way you will see some of the earliest surviving convict earthworks in Sydney, the few surviving wool stores that once dominated the Quay, the original foreshore of Warrane/Sydney Cove and ‘hidden’ gems through the Rocks the result of centuries of occupation and maritime activity. It was there and at Millers Point that bubonic plague took hold in 1900, brought by rats that came ashore from docked ships. The Rocks, too, was the crucible of Australia’s modern urban heritage movement / sector; for it was saved from wholesale destruction by community, professional and union action in the 1970s. Urban archaeology found its beginnings there in the 1990s.

LENGTH: 3 HOURS
PLEASE NOTE: Maximum of 10 people.

The Green Heart of Sydney:
a walk through the Domain and the Sydney Botanic Gardens

This walk goes from Speakers Corner, in front of the Art Gallery of NSW, through the Domain and the famous Sydney Botanic Gardens to the Opera House. I wrote my doctoral thesis on Sydney’s parks so this is a ‘labour’ of love. Along the way you will find out about the Aboriginal people of the Harbour, early colonial attempts to understand their new environment, the birth of Australian agriculture, the remarkable provision of green space for the inhabitants of a convict town and the people’s use of that space. It wasn’t always as the authorities intended. We’ll also talk about the history of the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy – Garden Island and Fleet Base East is next door to the Domain.

LENGTH: 2 HOURS
PLEASE NOTE: Maximum of 10 people. There are no steps and the walk is relatively easy and flat. You will receive notes beforehand to provide some historical background to the area.