Walking on Sydney's Wild Side - New York Times

Hamilton Lund/Destination NSW

A walk in the Sydney Harbour National Landscape.

The blue-tongued lizard eyed me suspiciously but remained still long enough for photographs, while a kookaburra laughed and a diminutive wallaby rustled in the brush. Rock engravings of fish and kangaroos marked ceremonial sites of Aboriginal ancestors. Scented forests of eucalyptus and gum trees shaded our path over sandstone and thin topsoil, classic Outback topography surprisingly concealed on the outskirts of Sydney.

“We’re six kilometers from the largest city in Australia, but you look around, and you’re in the bush,” said my guide, Ian Wells, gazing at the tangle of branches above the trail.

More specifically that August morning, my family and I were hiking in the suburbs of Sydney on a 7.5-mile route between Spit Bridge in Mosman and the beach town Manly, combing the north shore of Sydney Harbour, a natural asset celebrated by everyone from Capt. James Cook in the 18th century to fans of the harborfront Sydney Opera House, but largely unsung as a coastal wilderness until recently.

In February, Sydney Harbour was named the country’s newest National Landscape, calling attention to the wild side in Sydney’s metropolitan area of 4.6 million residents. It encompasses a 620-square-mile expanse of beaches, rivers, islands and bushland, ranging from Royal National Park in the south to the Barrenjoey Headland in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and Parramatta Park to the west. Other National Landscapes include the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Centre, the country’s desert center and home to the famous rock formation Uluru.

In a country with an abundance of wilderness — including more than 600 national parks — the National Landscapes program is designed to help visitors as well as locals identify some of Australia’s unique wild places. The program, a partnership between Parks Australia and Tourism Australia, two government organizations, began in 2006. The latest designation prompted five tour operators, including Mr. Wells, to add harbor-focused tours. Among the excursions is a two-hour “tea at sea” cruise. New kayaking routes and ferry tours are also planned.

“There is easily a week of exploring you can do around Sydney Harbour and still find new experiences and lifelong memories every day,” Tony Burke, the former Australian environment minister, said in a statement last spring.

An extensive ferry system in the harbor links Sydney’s downtown Circular Quay to nearby beach communities like Watsons Bay, gateway to the South Head. It was there that my husband, 13-year-old son and I spent a morning atop the area’s sandstone cliffs, spying humpback whales, soaring albatrosses and flocks of rainbow lorikeet. But the best way to interpret the bush, we learned, is to take a full-day guided hike with Mr. Wells of Sydney Coast Walks (sydneycoastwalks.com.au), which recently added harbor itineraries ranging from half-day trips to weekend-long treks.

Our full-day walk to Manly (159 Australian dollars, about the same in U.S. dollars, including transportation and food) began with a thrilling water-taxi ride in the shadow of a towering cruise ship and through teeming ferry lanes to an exclusive yacht harbor. There we started our walk after an Aboriginal greeting from Mr. Wells. “Brothers, sisters, friends, I see you,” he translated from Ku-ring-gai, noting the Aboriginal belief that spirits linger after death.

The walk began on the fringe of Sydney among tidy beach homes but soon turned to remote dirt track, where banyan roots snake around boulders, freshwater streams trickle from fern-covered cliffs and piles of oyster shells mark ancient Aboriginal dump sites. We stopped for snacks at a deserted pocket beach, then continued upward through the coastal gum forest, listening to our guide’s encyclopedic identification of plant species and their Aboriginal uses in making fire sticks, bedding, baskets and spears. Topping out in dry heathland, we met the Outback by way of the lizard and the Aboriginal engravings. As a pod of dolphins swam below in the clear blue depths of the harbor’s Crater Cove, we spread out on the hilltop to lunch on deli sandwiches and wraps that Mr. Wells unpacked. “I hope you don’t mind the view,” he said, joking.

The trail gradually re-enters civilization at Manly, a resort town, and the nearly seven-hour tour concludes with a 20-minute ferry ride back from breezy Manly to Sydney’s downtown docks.

“I think there are Sydneysiders who don’t realize there’s this much nature here,” said Mr. Wells, pointing out our picnic spot high above a bush-covered hill, with nary a kookaburra visible from water level.