Everyone has heard of Bondi, but Sydney's other famous beach suburb, Manly, inspires a devotion that is hard to match. A writer for Traveller who first moved to Australia as a migrant has penned a love letter to the peninsula where he landed, taught English to Japanese surfers and backpackers, and never really left.
His case for Manly is simple: it sits wedged between the harbour and the ocean, so you get two very different coastlines in one small suburb. The commute from the city is by ferry, which turns the trip home into the best part of the day. Add screeching lorikeets, Norfolk pines, surf lifesavers in red and yellow, and a permanent smell of sunscreen and salt, and it's easy to see why he compares living there to a never-ending holiday.
The piece is refreshingly honest about the downsides. The Corso, Manly's main pedestrian strip, can feel like a tourist trap — ice-cream shops, surf-wear boutiques and school-holiday crowds delivered en masse by ferry. But the author's point is that most visitors barely scratch the surface. Beyond the main beach there are a dozen smaller beaches tucked into coves that locals keep to themselves, plus remnants of bushland with giant ferns hidden in gullies.
For active travellers, two highlights stand out. The Manly Scenic Walkway is described as one of the world's best urban hikes — a coastal trail where you can feel lost in bush with only distant skyscrapers to remind you you're in a major city. And out on North Head there's a striking mix of history and views: Indigenous rock carvings, WWII gun emplacements, the sandstone ruins of the Old Quarantine Station (a window into Sydney's immigration past), and a lookout that takes in the full sweep of Sydney Harbour.
Why should this matter to a visitor? Because Manly is one of the rare city beaches that works for every kind of trip. Surf lessons and a buzzing beachfront if you want the classic day out; quiet coves and heritage walks if you don't. It's an easy ferry ride from Circular Quay, so it slots into any Sydney itinerary, yet it rewards people who linger — the author now lives a short drive away and still visits weekly, decades on.
His verdict, worth taking seriously from someone who has also lived in Geneva, Chengdu and Edinburgh: whether you stay a day or a decade, if you can't be happy in Manly, you can't be happy anywhere.
