Berowra Waters has an amazing history from the Aboriginals who inhabited the area, the people who settled here right through to today.rs
Guided tours are tailor made to suit your ability and experience. We offer walking/hiking tours along the Great North Walk and surrounds as well as kayak tours and boat tours. Our tours run from 2 hours through to half day and full day tours including morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.
Our Popular Tours
Historic Bar Island – 4 hour boat tour starting from Berowra Waters Marina. You will enjoy relaxing on a luxury BBQ Boat taking in the stunning waterway views. This tour will take you down Berowra Creek giving you a bit of local history, pointing out middens and carvings along the way. Arriving at Bar Island you will have time to wander around this historic island taking in the sights. Morning or afternoon tea will be served on the way back to Berowra Waters Marina.
Calabash Bay Tour – 2 hour kayak tour starting from Berowra Waters Marina.
Berowra to Berowra Creek – 2 hour hiking tour starting from the ridgetop to the saltwater edge of Berowra Waters. This one way walk transverses a number of plant communities as you descend the hillside along a mix of firetrails and narrow walking tracks. Sweeping views of the Berowra Creek system will accompany you on this walk as your guide explains to you the wealth and importance of the flora and fauna found in this section of the National Park.
A Bit of History
Aborigines were the beginning of Berowra’s settlement. This is recorded in their rich collection of rock carvings, cave paintings and shell middens. There are more than 100 of these sites in the Berowra district. The latest evidence from carbon dating remains found below Nepean gravel beds indicate that the aborigines have been in the Hawkesbury area for at least 47,000 years.
The Darug and Guringai tribes of this area were unfortunately hit hard by small pox and diseases brought in by the First Fleet when they arrived and settled in the area around 1788.
George Peat, the Crumptons, Crosslands, George Collingridge and Jack Smith were the pioneer settlers (1830s to 1890s) in this area. Any account of the village/town/suburb or Berowra, however, must begin in 1879 with Mary Wall, who settled on 60 acres fronting the (now) Pacific Highway (near Waratah Road).
From the 1930s people like Rex Jones, Arthur Lubeck, the Windybank family, C.J. Turner and Roy Corrigan fostered tourism. Berowra’s Golden Age of Tourism was throughout the 1930s and continued during the war. The steam trains brought thousands of people to Berowra Waters. Coaches, hire cars, private cars and buses competed for fares.
And so the development of Berowra Waters continued through the wars and to what we have today. With a lot of “hidden”gems around the place including Aboriginal middens, paintings, carvings as well as Bar Island, the wreak of the HMAS Parramatta and our secret fresh water pool, a guided tours will enlighten you to all of Berowra Waters secrets….well maybe not all!
As Mike Joffe (Author of Yarns & Photos) points out -“No other suburb has the following combination: surrounded on all sides by bush; its own natural boundaries of water valleys and ridges; National Parks and many walking trails; its own Freeway, railway and Pacific Highway; the optimum 700 feet above sea level for good health; the right distance to get the sea air and the mountain air; its own modern shopping centre; plus Hornsby, plus only one hour from the Opera House Car Park, plus the Hawkesbury River.”