New South Wales
Travel Guide
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My travel guides are organised in two main sections:
Overview
This will help you to decide if this is a location for you, and if so, where you may want to spend your time. For larger countries, I also provide additional overviews of different regions, states and territories.
Best things to do
Here I list specific things to see and do. For each, I provide star ratings so that you can easily see how good, unique and adventurous each place is. This means that you can easily pick out where sounds right for you!
New South Wales Travel Guide 2026
This is part of my Australia travel guide. Given Australia’s massive size and immense diversity, I’ve made specific guides and recommendations for the best places to visit in each state. You can see my main Australia Travel Guide by following this link; this also has links to my guides for each of Australia’s states and territories. I have lived, worked and travelled in Australia and visited every state and territory, so here goes!
New South Wales (NSW)
Home to Sydney and the Blue Mountains, this state is a lot of fun! In the north, you’ll find Byron Bay (locals just call it ‘Byron’). It’s a bit of a hippie place to be and I wasn’t blown away by it at first, but it quickly grew on me and I ended up really enjoying my time here. I also undertook a surf school and found it a great place to learn, as there are nice beginner waves and very few people on the beaches.
The coastline of NSW is beautiful; however, I personally preferred the coastlines of Queensland, SA and WA. I really love Sydney, there’s loads to do in the city, a great city centre (CBD), the harbour is stunning and it’s got a great vibe. There are also nice beaches, including the famous Bondi beach which has huge waves (best to avoid if you aren’t a strong swimmer) and some nice coastal walks. Sydney is a great place for a photoshoot, being the home of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. The layout of the harbour means that there are several different harbours to visit, all with their own vibe, unlike Melbourne, which has a more circular harbour shape. I would recommend taking a normal taxi boat from the main quay (Circular Quay) to Manly, this will save you money on doing a boat tour of the harbour, as you will get the same views, plus you will get the chance to see Manly, which is a nice suburb on the north side of the harbour with a good beach.
The Blue Mountains, which are also located just West of Sydney, are stunning and very dramatic. There are waterfalls to swim in, great hikes down almost sheer cliff-faces which are carved into the rock and they are categorised by what I can only describe as ‘binary’ landscapes. The land in many areas is flat at two elevations, higher land which is flat with cliff faces dropping vertically to other flat lands below. It’s really incredible and definitely worth visiting. If you don’t have a car, then definitely rent one in Sydney and make your way out there. I am sure that there are buses that way, but I personally recommend a car so that you can do more in a day, see more and have a better experience.
Best places to visit in New South Wales
I provide star ratings for each of my recommendations so that you can quickly narrow down what appeals to you. Explanations for what these mean can be found here.
I use Google Maps to plan all my trips and it’s a game-changer! I’ve added links to Google Maps for each of the locations below so you can easily add them to your own map. Be sure to copy this web link into the description of each location you save so that you can easily refer back to this guide later. Check out this blog for more tips on how to use Google Maps to enhance your travels!
Byron Bay
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: Coastal town
Recommended Duration: 2 days+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
Just over the Queensland Border into NSW, you can find Byron Bay (AKA Byron). It’s famous for many reasons: hippie vibes, forest raves, celebrity locals (including Chris Hemsworth) and surfing. When I first arrived, I didn’t get the hype.
I stayed at the Arts Factory Hostel, which had a good social vibe but was nothing fancy. The accommodation here is expensive, even for Australia, so bear that in mind. The Arts Factory is a bit ‘hippie vibes’ but has a really good talent show once a week (like legit crazy good performers there). Down on the beach, as with much of Australia, you’ll find plenty of fire performers just doing their thing and at the hostel, you can also find information about jungle raves. I went to one, one night, in an abandoned railway tunnel, which was pretty cool, although transport to and from these can be a pain. I also took my first surf lesson here, which was great and I highly recommend it! A good surf school can take you to beaches with nobody else there and easy beginner waves, making it the perfect place to learn to surf! Overall, it is a hipster/hippie town and it shows by the people who live there and the restaurants – I’m not really into that stuff despite my years of travelling and thought this wasn’t my vibe but the longer I stayed there the more I fell in love with it. I still probably preferred Airlie Beach to stay long term, but it’s a cool place and very sociable. I would recommend breakfast at ‘The Hum’ and grab yourself an amazing Acai bowl to set you up for surfing and exploring for the day. It’s also on the beach, so it’s a great place to watch the world go by and soak up the sun.
Killen Falls
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: Waterfall
Recommended Duration: 1 hour
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
Nice waterfall.
Dorrigo National Park (Rainforest and falls)
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: Wildlife and hikes
Recommended Duration: 2 hours+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
The Dorrigo Rainforest offers pleasant walks and a good place to see wildlife and nature. Danger Falls are also located just north of here, if you want to stop by there for a look too. Ebor Falls is also impressive and located around 40 minutes drive to the west.
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: National Park
Recommended Duration: 1 day+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
I really liked this National Park. It’s a bit inland from the coast, so it’s off the main tourist route. I stumbled across it as I did some work at a mine at nearby Boggabri and came here on my days off and it was well worth it. It is a very unique national park.
Get yourself to Sawn Rocks lookout, which looks like organ pipes (a bit like the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland), as it is also an ancient volcanic rock formation. There are loads of great hikes to take your pick from. I’d also recommend heading up the Dough Sky Lookout for some incredible views.
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: Beach
Recommended Duration: 2 hours+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
This beach is pretty picturesque and many will know it because this is where the famous Australian Soap Opera, Home and Away, is filmed. The Beaches are nice and if you head up to the Barrenjoey Lighthouse, it’s a nice walk with a beautiful view down the beach.
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: Coastal city with beaches
Recommended Duration: 3 days+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
Let’s be honest, if you go to Australia, you have to see Sydney. It’s iconic and with good reason. You have the city centre (‘CBD’) with the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House. The main quay next to the opera house is called Circular Quay.
I would recommend taking a ferry to Manly in the North of Sydney. Manly has a nice beach, is a place to surf and is a good day out as well as being less touristy than Bondi Beach (pronounced ‘bond-eye’). You will also get a great view of the harbour and save yourself some time and money compared with paying for a specific Sydney Harbour boat tour, which, to me, will set you back more money and will drag on a bit as well. You can also get a nice view of the city centre from the north of the harbour at places like Bradley’s Head and the Robertsons Point Lighthouse. The Opera House is on the east side of Circular Quay; however, on the west side, you can find an area of town called The Rocks. These are old warehouses which are now turned into restaurants, bars and nightclubs. It’s nice to see some historic Australian Architecture here and is a good place to enjoy nightlife. If you are feeling more risky, you can also climb over the Sydney Harbour Bridge (along the top, that is). I also loved the Royal Botanic Gardens located just behind (south of) the opera house. The gardens are elevated too, so you can look onto the opera house from up there and get the lay of the land. I’d also recommend Darling Harbour, it’s just west of Circular Quay and is home to the Australian National Maritime Museum. You can see a range of ships and submarines through the ages in the harbour and the museum is worth going into too and I’d say get yourself snooping around all the old history ships you can. I also went inside a submarine there, which was pretty cool. There are a range of other museums and attractions to choose from. I’d say head up the Sydney Tower Eye at sunset if you can and see the city in the day and night. Bondi is also famous, but for this reason, you’ll find it pretty busy with people (unlike most of Australia’s beaches, which are massive and have few people). It’s still worth checking out as it is an Australian cultural icon, but to me, I’d just spend half a day there at most. I found it fun to bodyboard there as the waves are pretty big and powerful.
Adventure
Andy Argo
Uniqueness
Category: National Park
Recommended Duration: 1 day+
Andy visited?: Yes
Description
To me, these are a must-see and easily one of my Australia trip highlights. They are located around one hour west of Sydney and get their name because of a blue haze in front of them. This blue haze is caused by droplets of oil from the large number of eucalyptus trees in the area.
I would highly recommend getting a car to explore the Blue Mountains so that you can cover more ground in a day, go at your own pace and do what you want to do. I found the landscape pretty drastic and almost ‘binary’, whereby you have two tiers of elevation: high and low, connected by sheer cliffs between them. This is in contrast to other mountain ranges, where you may have many high variations and jagged peaks. There are some incredible lookouts and epic hikes, many of which go down steps carved into the side of dramatic cliffs. I’d recommend: Jamison Lookout, Lincoln’s Rock, the Three Sisters Walk, Minnehaha Falls, the Grand Canyon Walking Track, Evans Lookout and most of all the Bridal Veil Falls, where you can see a waterfall spewing out from the top of the tablelands to the lands below! The Blue Mountains are truly awesome; they are easily accessible from Sydney and have a range of adventures. If you want, you can just jump out of your car at lookout points, but I’d recommend doing some of the steeper hikes. I’ve given this 2 adventure stars as I recommend some hikes, but you could easily make this a 3 if you’re into Rock climbing! Enjoy!
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Title image: Sydney Harbour, New South Wales