Sydney Sunday trip: Cronulla and Bundeena coastal walk (+small guide!)

Hey again! After last week's trip to Manly it's Sunday again, which means making use of ride all you want for $2.60 promo! Fortunately, even though weather forecast said it's going to rain all weekend, we woke up to a fairly pleasant and sunny weather, which only got better throughout the day.

This week we decided to go to Bundeena, located in the southern Sydney, and venture into the Royal National Park to catch some coastal views.

(pssst, you can click on the photos for full resolution!)

It's fairly uncomplicated to get there, though it takes a while: about an hour by train from Central Station - on line T4, terminating at Cronulla Station (blue line), and then taking the ferry (green line), which takes around 30 minutes to get to Bundeena. Unfortunately, the ferry doesn't accept Opal, so be prepared to pay $6.40 for one-way adult ticket, making it $25.60 for return trip for a couple 😞

After getting off at Cronulla Station, we grabbed a coffee at the Cronulla beach, and of course took a couple of photos:

With coffees in hands, we went east around the coast, full of giant stones and waves constantly breaking at them from below. That proved to be a slight mistake, because in one place there was no other option than to get off the stones onto the sand, trying not to get our shoes wet from the waves... and of course, as soon as we did that, a huge wave came and soaked our shoes.

Fearless, we just took our shoes off and continued along the coast. We got to a smaller beach, with only a few people around. It's so small, it doesn't even have any name on Google Maps.

After getting off the beach and into the settlements, we strolled towards Cronulla Wharf in order to catch the aforementioned ferry. Friendly tip: even though you're supposed to buy tickets onboard, and staff accept only cash, you can buy one-way or return tickets from the coffee stand in front of the ferry and pay with card. That saved us ~30 minutes of waiting for another ferry, as ATM was nowhere around.

A couple of shots from the ride:

We landed at Bundeena Wharf, just in the middle of Bundeena Beach. It really felt like we weren't in the largest Australian city anymore! There were only a handful of buildings close to the beach, and small number of people sunbathing and swimming. It felt more like some secluded Pacific island:

After landing and refilling our water supply, it was time for the walk itself. Our initial plans slightly derailed due to late time, and we decided to go for the Balconies:

Half of the walk was throughout the city/town/village of Bundeena, and next half was through the Royal National Park - place that's on our list to visit when we have more time to spare.

On our way there, we caught a nice view of Sydney, with CBD skyscrappers clearly standing out!

After arriving, the view was absolutely stunning. Again, even though it was Sunday, there were maybe only 10 people around apart from us, so it was extremely pleasant to sit there on fancy rocks and just gaze...

To sum it up: even though it's farther away from city centre than other places (like Manly), Bundeena and Royal National Park can definitely be put on the list of 1-day excursions from central Sydney. More so that given the longer ride from the city, less people and tourists will be inclined to go there when compared to, say, Bondi Beach - so it may be also better if you're like us and you prefer to walk without disturbance. There are much more places further south into the park we didn't cover today, so we'll definitely come back there in the nearest future!

Thank you for reading ✨ as a bonus, on our way back, this guy was ravaging through someone's lawn 😁

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