Photo: -wuppertaler (CC BY 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through colonial Sydney and the Country of the Gadigal people, who knew this place as Warrane. It begins at Circular Quay, built between 1837 and 1844, and climbs through The Rocks: Cadman's Cottage of 1815–1816, the Susannah Place terrace of 1844, the excavated foundations of the Big Dig, the Argyle Cut, begun by convict chain gangs in 1843, the Garrison Church, the Observatory with its one o'clock time ball, and Dawes Point beneath the Harbour Bridge. Back across the quay come Customs House, the Obelisk of Distances in Macquarie Place, the outlined foundations of First Government House and the Opera House on Bennelong Point. The route then follows the Royal Botanic Garden past Government House and Farm Cove to Mrs Macquarie's Chair and the First Encounters Garden, and ends on Macquarie Street: the Conservatorium in Macquarie's stables, the Mitchell Library, Parliament House, Sydney Hospital and the Mint in the old Rum Hospital, and Hyde Park Barracks, one of the Australian Convict Sites on the World Heritage List.
22 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 284 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 57 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Circular Quay, Cadman's Cottage, Susannah Place Museum, The Big Dig, Argyle Cut, Garrison Church, Sydney Observatory, Dawes Point and the Harbour Bridge.
Customs House, Macquarie Place Park, First Government House, Sydney Opera House, Government House, Farm Cove, Mrs Macquarie's Chair, Cadi Jam Ora - First Encounters Garden.
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mitchell Library, Parliament House of New South Wales, Sydney Hospital, The Mint, Hyde Park Barracks.
Four houses and a corner shop built by Irish immigrants in 1844, telling the lives of their residents up to 1990.
The road cut through the sandstone ridge, begun by convict chain gangs in 1843 and finished with explosives in 1859; the chisel marks are still on the walls.
Where Lieutenant William Dawes wrote down the Sydney language with Patyegarang as his teacher, now beneath the bridge's southern approach.
Utzon's building on Bennelong Point, opened by Queen Elizabeth II in October 1973, its shells derived from a single imagined sphere.
The bench convicts carved into the rock for Elizabeth Macquarie in 1810, to watch the ships and the harbour.
Greenway's convict barracks of 1817–1819, built for up to 600 men, now a museum of more than 4,000 objects found on the site.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 22 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 22 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Sydney — The Rocks, Circular Quay and the Opera House, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
22 narration points, including Circular Quay, Argyle Cut, Dawes Point and the Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera House and Farm Cove. That is about 49 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 22 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.