New South Wales

Sydney anchors New South Wales, its harbour framed by the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, but the state’s real character shows once you leave the city behind. The coast unfolds into national parks, quiet beach towns and eucalypt forest for hundreds of kilometres in either direction. We rarely recommend Sydney alone: pairing a few days there with time in the surrounding wilderness gives a far truer sense of New South Wales, and of Australia’s east coast at its best.