Taken together with its surrounds, Sydney is in many ways a microcosm of Australia as a whole - if only in its ability to defy your expectations and prejudices as often as it confirms them. A thrusting, high-rise business centre in the CBD , a high-profile gay community in Darlinghurst , inner-city deprivation of unexpected harshness, with the highest Aboriginal population of any Australian city, and the dreary traffic-fumed and flat suburban sprawl of the Western Suburbs , are as much part of the scene as the beaches, the bodies and the sparkling harbour. But all in all, Sydney seems to have the best of both worlds - if it's seen at its gleaming best from the deck of a harbour ferry, especially at weekends when the harbour's jagged jaws fill with a flotilla of small vessels, racing yachts and cabin cruisers, it's at its most varied in its neighbourhoods , not least for their lively café and restaurant scenes. Getting away from the city centre and exploring them is an essential part of Sydney's pleasures.
A short ferry trip across to the leafy and affluent North Shore accesses tracts of largely intact bushland, with bushwalking and native animals and birds right on the doorstep. In the summer the city's hot offices are abandoned for the remarkably unspoilt ocean and harbour beaches strung around the eastern and northern suburbs. Day-trips away offer a taste of virtually everything you'll find in the rest of Australia. There are magnificent national parks and native wildlife - Ku-Ring-Gai Chase and Royal being the best known of the parks, each a mere hour's drive from the centre of town. North of the centre the Central Coast is great for surfers, and has more enclosed waters for safer swimming and sailing. Inland, the Blue Mountains offer tea rooms, scenic viewpoints and isolated bushwalking. On the way, and along the Hawkesbury River , are historic colonial towns. Inland to the northwest is the Hunter Valley , Australia's oldest and possibly best-known wine-growing region, amongst pastoral scenery.
