Running tour · Sydney

Harbour, Bridge and Sails

5.8 mi run

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. Hyde Park and the Anzac Memorial

   Look to the south end of the park: pink granite, a stepped top, big amber arched windows, all of it doubled in the long Pool of Reflection. That's the Anzac Memorial.

2. Hyde Park Barracks

   Look up at the clock on the gable of the brick barracks. It reads "L.Macquarie Esq., Governor 1817".

3. The Royal Botanic Garden

   Look at the stone wall curving around Farm Cove, all the way from Mrs Macquarie's Point to the Opera House. Hand-cut sandstone. It's the most distinctive feature of the whole garden.

4. Mrs Macquarie's Chair

   Look for the bench cut into the sandstone, with words carved in the rock above it. This is Mrs Macquarie's Chair. Convicts carved it by hand for Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

5. The Sydney Opera House

   Look at the white shells of the Opera House, filling the whole of Bennelong Point. The Gadigal people know this point as Dubbagullee.

6. Circular Quay and Sydney Cove

   Look out over the ferry wharves. This is Sydney Cove, and its Dharug name is Warrane. The land around it belonged to the Gadigal. Eora men speared fish from this shore, and women fished with lines from their canoes, called nowies.

7. The Rocks

   Look up the slope at the narrow lanes, the sandstone terraces and the pubs. The Gadigal knew this area as Tallawoladah. It takes its English name, The Rocks, from the local sandstone the later houses were built from.

8. Observatory Hill

   Look at the sandstone observatory, with its two copper domes and the square tower beside them. On top of the tower, a ball sits on a mast.

9. The Sydney Harbour Bridge

   Look up at the steel arch overhead. Sydney calls it the Coathanger. Engineer John Bradfield oversaw it, and Dorman Long of Middlesbrough designed and built it. The two halves of the arch touched for the first time on 19 August 1930. Sixteen workers died building it, only two of them by falling.

10. The Sydney Marathon

    Look at the Opera House steps. On race weekend, the Sydney Marathon finish line goes up right here. The course starts in North Sydney and crosses the Harbour Bridge, there across the cove.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source