Great family-friendly activities in Sydney, Australia

Family-friendly activities in Sydney, extracted from kidsGo! Sydney

By Mio Debnam, illustrated by Tania Willis

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Sydney Australia is a fab place to visit!

It has a sparkling harbour, wide open spaces, awesome heart-pounding rides, and crashing surf to leap into!

You can also say g’day to some weird and wonderful Aussie animals there. We’d recommend going bush at Featherdale Park, which is an hour away from the city, or for something closer, take a 12-minute ferry ride to the wonderful Taronga Zoo.

Taronga, which is on the side of a hill (the animals have homes with a harbour view!) has loads of animals, and there are heaps of different shows and keeper talks to see, so make sure you get there early and plan your visit well For a special treat, see the zoo at night with the sleepover programme called the Roar and Snore. Participants go to the zoo after closing hours, have dinner and go on a tour, before going to sleep in a luxury tent!

The next day, you can explore the harbour, by sailing on an old fashioned ‘tall ship’, or admire it from the pedestrian walkway of the Harbour Bridge. If you’re over 10 and have a head for heights, you can get an even better view by doing the BridgeClimb – a fantastic though pricy experience which will see you walking all the way up the arch of the bridge to the highest point, 134m above the water – Yikes!

At the southern end of the bridge is The Rocks – the oldest part of the city (the ghost tours of this area are spooky!), which used to be home to the Aboriginal people until the British settlers arrived in 1788 and began building on it. The planetarium is here, as are all sorts of other interesting things – for example, if you examine the walls of the Argyle Cut, you’ll see the chisel marks left by the convicts who literally had to cut the path through rock. There’s even an antique men’s toilet!

There are lots of fun activities you can do in Sydney, such as visiting the funfair at Luna Park, trying the interactive exhibits at the Powerhouse Museum, riding a Segway at Olympic park, swimming with sharks at Oceanworld Manly, going to circus classes, or playing laser tag, but we love being outdoors the most.

Slap on the sun protection and go explore on a bike or on inline skates. There are tons of wonderful beaches too, where you can swim in rock pools, learn how to surf or just sit on the sand to enjoy some delicious fish and chips. Watch out for the seagulls though – they’re fond of fish and chips too!

Details of all these suggestions and much more can be found in kidsGo! Sydney.

Happy Holidays!

Text © copyright of Mio Debnam and kidsGo! Travel Series (an imprint of Haven Books)
Illustrations © copyright of Tania Willis and kidsGo! Travel Series (an imprint of Haven Books)
Reproduced here by Sassy Mama with the permission of Haven Books Limited