If you have any questions and/or comments on this site, Kids in Sydney, please send me an email: wikkepeters@hotmail.com.

Sydney is by no means a dangerous city in the traditional sense of the word. Crime rates are low, and the Central Business District breathes a clean safety compared to many other big cities. However, there are some other kinds of potential dangers for children.

Water

One of them is water. By law, every swimming pool needs to be fenced, but drowning is still a major cause of death for children under five. Be aware and when on the beach, always swim between the red flags.

Animals

Australia’s fauna may also be a threat. Although highly uncommon, spider- and snake bites occur occasionally, even in Sydney’s metro area. Most spiders are fairly harmless, exceptions are funnelweb spiders and redbacks. Don’t let your children play in thick bushes, make them wear solid footwear when bushwalking, and discourage them from picking up any animal. Check out www.spiders.com.au to learn about Australia’s spiders.
Like other parts of Australia, Sydney’s got it’s share of jellyfish. Not the potentially deadly box jellyfish, but there’s the bluebottle (bright blue with long tentacles) that can give you a nasty sting.

Shopping with or shopping for children are to very different things. Therefore, I’ve lisetd to best places to go with children and the best places to go shopping for children.

With children

Paddy’s Markets (www.paddysmarkets.com.au), a lively, Asian-style market in Chinatown, is your best pick. Give children three dollars and tell them to spend it on whatever they want, and they’ll happily spend an hour or so browsing through the cheerful rubbish on sale at Paddy’s Markets. Great for silly souvenirs, plastic toys and cheap clothes.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Queen Victoria Building, locally known as the QVB. It’s a historic place that will capture the imagination of at least some children, especially the beautiful big clock, best admired from the top floor. Shopping in the QVB is fairly expensive.

For children

Toys

If you are looking for (quality) toys in the City, try department stores Myer on Pitt Street or David Jones on Elizabeth street. There you’ll find the usual Lego and Barbies. Paddy’s Markets (see above) is good for toys that don’t have to last a lifetime. 
If you are somehow desperately short on toys, try the Toys’R Us in Chatswood. You can get there in about fiteen minutes by train from Wynyard (Northern Line). Big, inexpensive department stores like K-Mart and Target, are found in Bondi Junction and Chatswood (both accessible by train).

Clothes

Australian clothes for children are usually inexpensive, but aren’t always very imaginative. Think pale pink for girls and darkblue trackpants for boys. A good alternative in between cheap but boring and pretty but expensive, is the New Zealand brand Pumpkin Patch (www.pumpkinpatch.com.au). There’s a Pumpkin Patch store on Pitt Street (the pedestrain bit) in the City, and more stores in all the major shopping centres around Sydney.

Admitted, most children are not natural born hikers. But some walks in Sydney might keep children entertained.

The Cremorne Point walk. One of Sydney’s best, with a lot of variety. Take a ferry from Circular Quay and get off at Cremorne Point (see website for map and more details). The walk will take you about an hour if you walk slowly, and goes through bushreserve, past pretty harbourside houses, a free public pool and a childrens playground (near the Cremorne Point ferry wharf). It’s a secluded footpath so no worries about passing cars and crossing roads. The views of the Harbour are lovely. Stroller-friendly with only a few stairs.

The southern tip of the harbour is Watsons Bay. It’s about half an hour by ferry from Circular Quay, and from the wharf a short walk leads up to the Gap, a spectacular cliff. It’s got some rocky bits that children love climbing on. Picnic at the nearby park.
See www.sydneyferries.info for more information on walks starting from ferry wharves. Stroller-friendly.

From Palm Beach in Sydney’s very north, there’s an interesting path that takes you up to the little lighthouse on top of Barrenjoey Head. It’s quite a steep climb, and it’ll take you about 25 minutes to reach the top, but it’s exciting for children because there is some real climbing involved. On the top, there’s a quirky grave that tells the story of the light house keeper who died when struck by lightning. Not suitable for strollers.

Needless to say, there’s always something going on in Sydney. I’ve listed some that are intersting for children. Check out www.sydneyfestivals.com.au for more.

January gives you the Sydney Festival (www.sydneyfestival.com.au), a cultural festival at different locations in the city. Lots of plays and performances, some of them free and especially for kids.
February means Chinese Newyear (cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/cny), and Chinatown is the main location for all activities. The traditional parade is colorful and fun to watch.
February is also the month of world-famous Mardi Grass, a gay and lesbian festival that leads up to a cheeky parade. Suitable for children? Opinions are divided. It seems like a lot of fun, but don’t go if you don’t want your children exposed to nudity.
March
Easter in April brings the Hoopla Festival, a free circus and acrobate festival that will enchant children. It’s held in Darling Harbour, visit the website www.darlingharbour.com.au for details. An overrated festival is the annual Easter Show (www.sydneyfestivals.com.au/royal-easter-show).  It supposed to bring the country to the city, but what it mainly does is try to make you spend as much many as possible while you get to look at some cows in return. Looking at a rodeo in the evening might be fun, but in general, the Easter Show is way too crowded and way too expensive.
September: Festival of the Winds (www.waverley.nsw.gov.au/info/pavilion/fotw). A colorful kite-flying festival held at Bondi Beach.
November. Also on Bondi: Sculptures by the Sea (www.sculpturesbythesea.com.au). Another free event, that sees many fun and interesting sculptures placed along the footpath that runs from Bondi to Tamarama Beach (a 20 minute walk).
December is the start of outdoor cinemas in various locations. There’s one on Bondi Beach (www.bondiopenair.com.au), a big one in the Botanical Gardens (www.stgeorgeopenair.com.au) that unfortunately doesn’t screen a lot of kids movies, another one in Centennial Prak (www.moonlight.com.au) and one in North Sydney (www.starlightcinema.com.au) that screens familyflicks on fridaynight.

With an average of 240 days of clear skies and sunshine a year, Sydney definitely makes a good destination for families who love to be outside. Seasons are opposite to the Northern hemisphere, so it’s full on summer at Christmas. The outdoor swimming season roughly goes from october to april. It can get really hot in summer, temperatures of 35 degrees and over are not uncommon. February seems to be the stickiest month, with high humidity. Spring and autumn are both very pleasant, with twenty-plus temperatures and beautiful colors in nature.
July and August are the coldest months, with around sixteen degrees Celsius during the day, and a little colder at night. As a lot of houses don’t have central heating, this is the time for fleece sweaters and fireplaces.
Unlike Australia’s tropical north, Sydney doesn’t have a wet and a dry season, and there’s some rainfall year round. When it rains, it tends to be a lot in a short amount of time. For forecasts and current conditions, look at the governments weather website: www.bom.gov.au.

How do you find your way around in a city that covers almost 1,120 square kilometers?
A rental car will get you almost everywhere. But Sydney’s traffic is dense and parking can be a real problem. Public transport makes a good and inexpensive alternative. For all public transport goes: no matter how many children from the same family you take, you’ll only pay for one, half the price of an adult ticket. Children under four travel free.
A very helpful site to plan your trip by public transport is www.131500.info.

1. Rental cars

Plenty of options, try big names like Budget, Hertz and Thrifty for offers and deals. An inexpensive. often-used local dealer is Bayswater, at www.nobirds.com.au. 

2. Buses (www.sydneybuses.info)

Sydney’s public transport system relies heavily on buses, especially if you are leaving the Central Business District. You can pay the bus driver directly (they prefer small change), or buy a prepaid ticket from a news agency. The cheapest fare is AU$ 1.70, and that’ll get you two zones further. If you are planning on doing a lot of travel by public transport, it’s worth buying a travel week pass for about thirty dollar. It gives you unlimited travel on all public transport for a week.
The city’s main busstation is Wynyard (also an underground station). From there, you can get to all different directions. Other stations are located at the Queen Victoria Building, Circular Quay and Central Station.
The only parent-problem with buses is that they can be hard to negotiate with a stroller. You need to fold your stroller to get into an older-style bus with stairs. Newer, wheelchair-accessible buses take unfolded strollers. You have to put up the side-facing chairs right behind the driver, put the stroller there, facing the rear, like you would with a wheelchair.

3. Cityrail (www.cityrail.com.au)

Sydney’s rail network is extensive and links to the Countryrail network. You can use it to travel short distances in the inner city, but also to take a trip to, say, the Blue Mountains. An inner city ticket will cost you AU$ 2.90 for one way. There are different lines, each marked their own color and depending on the direction you travel. The main stations are Wynyard, Town Hall and Central. Trains with a destination outside Sydney leave from Central. Some older stations (for example Museum) haven’t got an elevator, so that means you have to carry your stroller up and down the stairs.

4. Ferries (www.sydneyferries.com.au)

Ferries are an extremely pleasant and childfriendly way of getting around, so never mind that it’s sometimes less efficient then taking a bus. The main ferry wharf is Circular Quay, with about fourty destinations. Purchase your ticket at one of the machines located at the wharves, or from the ticket offices. A one-way, inner Harbour ride is about AU$ 3.50 for an adult. Strollers and even bikes are easy to take on a ferry. And contrary to buses, you are allowed to drink and eat on a ferry (which is good news for hungry and impatient children) as long as you don’t make a big mess.

5. On foot

Sydney’s central district is fairly easy explored on foot. Distances aren’t that far apart, footpaths are wide and there are many safe crossings. There are walkways over the highway to get you from the city to Darling Harbour.

6. Bicycle

Sydney is not a bicycle-paradise. The main way of transport is a car and that shows. Drivers aren’t really used to cyclists, Sydney lacks quality bike-paths and is very hilly in some places. But things are getting better, and cycling the city centre is a real possibility. There are a number of places to rent a bike, one of them is www.bonzabikes.com.

7. Taxi’s

Taxi’s aren’t that expensive, especially compared to European cities. There are some predesigned taxi-stands in the city, for example on Circular Quay and behind the Imax in Darling Harbour. You can also just flag down a taxi on the street. Some taxi’s carry babyseats in the trunk, other drivers don’t mind if you take your baby on your lap, although I doubt it is legal. If you have a big family: taxi-drivers will usually only allow four passengers in their car, so if you happen to have three children, you have to use two taxi’s. (Althought occasionally we met a driver who took all five of us on.) You can also book a taxi online: www.abctaxis.com.au, or www.taxiscombined.com.au.

Going to a Sydney restaurant with children can be tricky. Generally, many restaurants will tolerate children in the early evening, as long as they are well behaved. Sounds reasonable, but making your children behave well in a restaurant can be a tiring and no fun experience. I’ve been given the evil eye on more than one occasion (admitted, my three are a noisy bunch).
Apart from that, tolerating children doesn’t necessarily mean catering for them. High chairs and childrens menu’s can be hard to find, some restaurants are packed with chairs and tables and have no space for kids to move around. So what to do if you detest McDonalds but don’t want to feel like you have to hush and discipline your children all the way through diner? Here are some of my ideas.

(Please send me an email if you know of another childfriendly restaurant.)

A good option is to go to a Chinatown restaurant. Children are usually welcomed there, no fuss made, and the same goes for most Thai restaurants. However, it can be hard to find something that suits picky eaters.

Food courts. They sometimes lack in atmosphere, but that is more or less made up by the variety of foods available and their casualness. A food court is a plaza-like area, with several food-outlets surrounding many tables and chairs. Usually, on offer are all kinds of food, from Turkish pide to Malaysian sate. There are many in Sydney, and they are a good choice for parents with children who want some good food quickly. A big one in the city’s centre is in the Pitt Street Mall. Enter via Meyer on Pitt Street or via the Queen Victoria Building. There’s another one above Paddy’s Markets, with a distinctive Asian feeling to it.

Another option is dining out in Darling Harbour (www.darlingharbour.com.au). Many of the restaurant have children’s menus and high chairs available. They can get a little crowded, especially during the weekend, and later on the evening, the party people take over.

The Oaks (www.oakshotel.com.au) ia a Lower North Shore institution. It’s got several pubs and restaurants, and the main drawcard for families is the beautiful garden, lightened up by the fairy-lights in a big oak tree, and the mouthwatering pizza’s that will make both parents and children happy. Buses go very regularly from Wynyard to Neutral Bay, and they stop right in front of The Oaks.

Another institution, but a little further away, is the Newport Arms (www.newportarms.com.au). Extremely family-friendly with outdoor picnic tables, three playgrounds and outdoor children’s cinema in summer. The view over Pittwater is very pleasant. Defenitely worth the 40 minutes drive from central Sydney.

The Bathers Pavillion (www.batherspavilion.com.au) is one of Sydney’s top restaurants, with topchef Serge Dainserau leading the pack. But it’s got an informal part called ‘The Cafe’, a colorful bit with soft cushions, high chairs and a children’s menu. The Bathers Pavillion is located in a beautiful building right on Balmoral beach. It’s not cheap: a children’s menu is AU$ 15, a main course for adults is about AU$ 23.

Last but not least: picnic! There’s many exciting and high-quality ready-to-grab food available in Sydney. Go to one of the many great deli’s or take-aways, get your food wrapped and take it to the nearest park. Eat your meal while sitting on the grass, watch the city or the boats go by and let your children run around without annoying anyone.

Sydney has many attractions to cater for different tastes. Here’s a list of attractions that offer something especially interesting for children, in one way or another. 

1. Luna Park (www.lunaparksydney.com)

You can see it’s luring smiling face from across Circular Quay, and it’s your best bet if you want straightforward amusement: the Luna Park. It’s originally built sometime in the 1920s and it still has an authentic historic feeling (if you ignore some of the rides). Especially the Coney Island bit with it’s big slides and cakewalk. Entry is free, you pay seperately for each attraction (with prepaid coupons), or you can buy an all-rides pass, price based on height, but all around 30 dollars. Take the ferry to Milsons Point to get there.

2. Sydney Tower and Oztrek (www.sydneytoweroztrek.com.au)

It’s Sydney’s highest point, the views are mesmerizing if you don’t mind the queues for the lift that sometimes occur. (Apparantly, the lifts are being upgraded, so queuing might be in the past soon.) A ticket to the sky will cost you AU$ 24, and AU$ 14.50 for children over 4. This includes an exciting ride on the Oztrek: a simulation that takes you across Australia in about 20 minutes. Rides are on about every half an hour, so if your timing is bad, you might end up waiting for both the lift to take you up and the Oztrek experience to start. The ride is quite realistic and can be frightening for young children.

3. Monorail (www.metromonorail.com.au)

Besides a way of transport, the monorail is also an attraction in itself, as it takes you over the heads of people, Sydney’s busy streets and the Pyrmont Bridge in Darling Harbour. A ticket allows you to get off wherever you want, so make a full circle because it’s worth it, and children love it.

5. Pylon (www.pylonlookout.com.au)

By now, everybody knows you can climb the Harbour Bridge (if you are over 10 years old), but there is also a less exhilarating way to enjoy the Harbour Bridge. For a start, there is a foothpath across the Bridge. But if you want to get a little higher, for AU$ 6 you can climb the 200 stairs of the southern pylon of the Harbour Bridge. The views are great, and inside is an interesting little exhibition on the making of the bridge. The Harbour Bridge footpath, starting in The Rocks, will take you there.

6. Sydney Observatory (www.sydneyobservatory.com.au)

An opportunity for science-obsessed kids to look at the stars in the southern hemisphere. Take a night ticket and look through telescopes to see the southern cross or whatver’s on. Marvel at the ingenious contrusctions used for sky mapping, and see an interesting 3D film on the creation of the universe. Located next to the Harbour Bridge in the historic Rocks area. During the Australian school holidays, there are special night tours for children.

7. Opera House (www.sydneyoperahouse.com.au)

It may be an overfamiliar image, but the Sydney Opera House is still an amazingly beautiful building. Generally kids like it, too, especially climbing the many stairs and playing hide and seek in all its corners and passages. For a true Opera House experience, book a ticket for a children’s play. They are reasonably priced and a good way the see the inside of the Opera House. Look for the special Kids at the House program.

8. Customs House (www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/customshouse)

Chances are that you will be around Circular Quay (‘ ferry central’) quite a bit, so when you have some time to kill while waiting for a ferry, drop in at the Customs House. It has a see-though floor in the central hall, with an interesting miniature of the city underneath. Children love walking on the city, and the Customs House itself is a beautiful historic building.