Pittwater's Eastern Shore (Station / Barenjoey Beach, Snapperman Beach, Sandy Beach, Paradise Beach, Paradise Beach, Clareville Beach, Taylors Beach, South Beach)

Pittwater’s eastern shore runs from Barrenjoey Headland down and around Stokes Point to Newport in the south. Along the way are a series of small, sheltered estuarine beaches quite unlike their ocean-facing brethren found on the opposite side of the peninsula. These ones are calm, quiet, and mostly secluded. Backed by bushland or residential properties and often accessible only by boat, kayak, or small street frontages, they offer a peaceful retreat for locals or the discerning traveller.

The first of the shore’s beaches starting in the north, however, bucks the trend, hogging all the attention.  Sitting just below the headland, Station Beach, also known as Barrenjoey, is recognisable from its frequent appearance in the background of Hinge profile photos taken from the famous lighthouse walk. It’s got a far livelier feel than its secluded neighbours.

Here chatter drifts over the water from afternoon feasts at The Joey - the old Barrenjoey Boatshed reimagined as a restaurant resting between the two halves of the beach. Thwacks of golf clubs echo from the Palm Beach Golf Course tucked just behind the sand, while the rumble of seaplanes deepens as they descend toward the marina. Amidst it all, day-trip revellers wade into the calm waters, their eyes following sailboats slipping out across the bay.

Station Beach at its southern end

A little further along the shore, at Observation Point, the views get even better. Looking southwards, you see the gentle arch of the next beach curving before a thin ribbon of waterfront homes snuggled beneath the trees. Mooring buoys and anchored yachts hover on glassy water stretching out to the soft green slopes of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on Pittwater’s western side.

This is Snapperman Beach, named after Chinese fishermen who set up camp on its shore in the early 19^th century to catch snapper for the Sydney and Melbourne Markets. Today their camps have been replaced by beach tents, hosts to families enjoying the calm, lagoon-like water.

Probably worth slipping off your shoes here, because things are about to get a whole lot sandier. Around the corner of Sand Point is the next beach, fittingly named – wouldn’t you know it - Sandy.  But it’s what lies beyond the sand that’s truly mesmerising.    

A lush emerald carpet of seagrass meadows stretches beneath the surface, providing food and shelter for a variety of marine life. Among the blades, devious octopuses and cuttlefish lie in wait, scheming in their hunt for unsuspecting prey. Nurseries of juvenile whiting and mullet make their first tentative swims, weaving their way nervously under the filtered light, while endangered white seahorses cling on for dear life, their tails working as anchors as they sway in the tides.

Boats, kayaks, and windsurfers are warned to avoid anchoring or dragging here, as the seahorse and its seagrass habitat are threatened and in decline. But never fear, more hospitable, dare I say paradisal, conditions await further south past Stokes Point, at - you guessed it - Paradise Beach.

Paradise Beach

Approaching from the water, this one feels like a hidden oasis – a 200-metre beach inconspicuously tucked under quiet residential hills. Humbly it lies, out of sight, so as to remain a local secret. Only a handful of people gather, set up shop on the sandstone seats on the northern end, taking quick dips in the tidal pool after walks along the boardwalk.  All around them, the water remains almost dormant– still but for the faint wind brushing ripples across its surface. Tranquil, soporific, blanketed beneath the shade of palms and gums, it’s hard to resist the lure of sleep.

To awaken from a midday doze, however, means more beaches can be found. Further south along the road, accessible from Delecta Avenue, I’m surprised the next one isn’t simply called Delectable -because that’s exactly what it is.

Straying from the naming scheme, Clareville Beach delivers scrumptiously perfect, calm, crystal-clear water along a languid shoreline. Stretching in front of houses and jetties, it eventually opens out in front of Clareville Reserve, where people settle in for a slow afternoon featuring the company of a book and some low-key swimming. An idle float is encouraged here, laid back with toes poking through the surface. Hugging the shore, let yourself drift in the shelter of a flotilla of anchored sailboats, their masts tracing slow arcs above gently bobbing hulls.

Clareville Beach

The next beach seems, at first glance, as if it’s for the thrill-seekers. Historically used by the Royal Australian Nacy for testing torpedoes, Taylors Point has since been repurposed as part of an underwater-warfare training facility. As a result, the public foreshore area known as Taylors Beach is bisected by a defence facility. The baths, wharf, park and dinghy storage remain open to the public, while the middle portion is government-owned, fenced and strictly off-limits.

For anyone not wanting to spark the Navy’s ire, it’s best to stick to the baths. Dive into a self-contained world framed by a white-railed timber boardwalk, wrapped in the echoes of kookaburras laughing from the gums scattered on the hill behind.  At high tide, swimmers glide as if out into the open water, the pool blending seamlessly into Pittwater.

Last up and the naming scheme is back with a vengeance as we approach the southernmost beach of Pittwater’s eastern shore. South Beach is a small one, squeezed between bushland, the sweet scent of angophora flowers prevailing over the salty air, the clicking of cicadas over the whispering tide.

With so many other nearby beaches, this one lies almost forgotten. Accessible only by water, its life is a solitary one, accompanied occasionally by the mooring of a lone dinghy. Its swimming enclosure feels neglected, a single thread of wire haphazardly strung through crumbling posts. Yet the glow of the sinking sun embraces it all the same, light lingering on the water’s surface before scattering like diamonds out across the estuary – a lavish gift to revel in as you close your day, here on Pittwater’s eastern shore.

South Beach

Total count: 109/179

Pittwater's Southern Shore (Bothams Beach, Church Point Beach, Pittwater Road Beaches, Bayview Baths, Bayview Dog Park)

Today we venture to the majestic southern shore of Pittwater, peacefully secured an hour’s drive north from the hustle and bustle of the Sydney CBD. Our journey there takes us over the Harbour Bridge, through the North Shore’s suburban streets, and alongside the soaring trees on the edge of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. By Ingleside’s extensive lawns and mansions and down the twisting hills of Bayview we go – until, finally, we burst out onto paradise.

We’re welcomed by panoramic sights of towering vegetation over golden coastlines. They stretch before bobbing boats and yachts scattered in their hundreds atop an azure sea, extending all the way across the length of Pittwater to its mouth at Broken Bay.

Pittwater is Sydney’s northernmost open body of water - a tidal estuary often considered a bay or harbour. Bordering the tip of the Northern Beaches peninsula and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, it separates greater Sydney from the Central Coast. On its southern end, in the suburbs of Bayview and Church Point, seven beaches lie awaiting.

Starting from the west, Bothams Beach sits on McCarrs Creek underneath the sloping hillside. Access the 300-metre stretch of sand via steps down from McCarrs Creek Road through a thick bush of Grey Ironbarks and River Red and Spotted Gums. A spot on the shore awaits us amongst stored dinghies and fallen logs. Meditate here on the sound of wind rustling lightly in the branches over gently lapping water. When you’re ready, turn your eyes out over the crystal-clear creek sparkling in the sunshine. Give into seduction and submerge yourself deep down into divinity.

Bothams Beach

From here’s ideal to launch a kayak and paddle up the creek, darting through perched sail boats, to merge into Pittwater’s open sea. Church Point Beach welcomes us, resting around the corner. Here, footed sand prints swerve amongst tethered rowboats, motor dinghies, and an old corroding kayak, before disappearing across the seafloor out to Scotland Island.

Dark, amber-coloured rocks lead the way back up from Church Point’s shore towards the coastal fringe of land, where outstretched gums dominate over sprouting tufts of grass. We lie here in the shade engulfed by the sounds of afternoon chatter and an acoustic guitar trickling over from a nearby restaurant.

Church Point Beach

But let’s not diddle-daddle here entranced too long - three more beaches are now calling us south-eastwards. Their sands spring sporadically like skin shredding from the serpentine Pittwater Road as it slithers along the shore. One falls off just below the Church Point carpark, another round the bend by a small marina, and the final on a bay dominated by the headquarters of the Bayview Yacht Racing Association.

Each lies still, unassumingly, only slowly growing in size as the late afternoon tide reluctantly withdraws. We chase the tide as we follow the beaches, navigating our way through tangled dinghies, recently afloat, now buried into the sand. Quick dips, waste high, are all that we can manage.

Beach on Pittwater Road

Perhaps we’ll find a more suitable swim at Bayview Baths further along. Added to the wharf in 1915, contiguous with the shoreline, the structure is one of Bayview’s earliest items still intact. Featuring timber piles and vertical steel bars, it used to serve as vital protection from the biting sharks once prevalent in Pittwater. Still a popular hub for the community, it continues to offer safe and easy access to the Pittwater estuary for those who wish to swim and wade.

Alas, our bad luck continues with the retreating tide; today the baths are little more than a pool of murky, shallow water. Better to settle ourselves on its sloping concrete steps for views of darting speedboats in the distance, resting a while before our final destination.

Bayview Baths

Bayview Dog Park, located at the south-eastern most edge of the estuary, is where the real action is at. Tread carefully though, for raucous, unleashed packs hurdle across the fields. Their eyes are fixated on one thing and one thing only: buckets of bouncing balls fleeing from slobbery deaths in the jaws of the canine killers.

Barks, howls, yelps, and growls follow the most desperate of the balls stumbling off the grass onto the spit of sand that curves into the water. Some balls burst through with a last hurrah into the swelling sea, praying the tides will carry them off to distant lands of safety. Persistent pups are not afraid of getting a little wet, however, paddling with all fours, nose forward, past leisurely swimmers and stand-up paddle board goers, in hot pursuit.

Bayview Dog Park

It's amongst this chaos we take our final plunge. Drifting away from the balls and pooches, we merge with the vast depths of sea below and sky above. Fading together from orange to pink to purple hues, we float endlessly away from Pittwater’s shores - on into the evening.

Total beaches: 87/179