Flat Rock Beach, Sydney: Secret Garigal National Park beach

Flat Rock Beach, Sydney, is a quiet beach on the Middle Harbour inside Garigal National Park. Access is via a short walk or kayak.

Where is Flat Rock Beach, Sydney?

Flat Rock Beach is a beach in the Middle Harbour section of Sydney Harbour. This Sydney Harbour beach is inside Garigal National Park, in the suburb of Killarney Heights. It is a small cove, with sand thinly spread on a flat rock ledge – hence the name.

Flat Rock Beach is best visited as part of a Middle Harbour kayaking tour from the Spit Bridge.

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How to get to Flat Rock Beach

By land, the way to get to Flat Rock Beach is along the 500 metre walking track from the end of Killarney Drive. The Flat Rock Track heads through bushland and rocky outcrops before arriving at the beach.

Is it safe to swim at Flat Rock Beach?

There is no lifeguard service at Flat Rock Beach, but this is a very well protected harbour beach, so you don’t have to worry about big waves and rips.

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Flat Rock Beach on a kayak tour

The following excerpt is taken from a review of the Sydney Harbour Kayaks Middle Harbour kayak tour, written by David Whitley. The tour is excellent and highly recommended. Bookings can be made here.

With a bump, the tip of the kayak hits Flat Rock Beach. Nowhere to be seen are herds of tan-hungry sun-worshippers. Nor are there surf lifesaving clubs, or kiosks selling ice creams, or inflatable balls being punched around. In the place of all the staple ingredients of a Sydney beach are just a few pieces of driftwood, plus an impromptu waterfall pouring down the cliffs after the previous evening’s storm.

Kayaks pulled ashore, a picnic blanket is spread out. Cheese, crackers, cookies and dips are devoured by the gleefully washed up kayakers, while overhead a gliding kestrel scans the water for alternative snacks. The birds generally have these untapped stretches of Sydney Harbour to themselves.

The harbour is broadly seen in terms of its postcard images. The Opera House, the Bridge, the giraffe necks sticking out from Taronga Zoo and the ferry chugging across from Circular Quay to Manly. But beyond the headline acts, it splinters into thousands of oft-ignored crags. Before bridges were constructed, early settlers would find the walk around the hundreds of kilometres of shoreline would take ten days.

Beaches without names in Sydney

On their way, they’d have found hundreds of little beaches such as Flat Rock. Many of them still can’t be accessed by land, and some still don’t have official names. Angela, the Sydney Harbour Kayaks tour guide pointed to one on the way here. “We call it Eagle Beach,” she said. “Because you often spot sea eagles perched in the tree above it.”

Flat Rock is inside the Garigal National Park, which was set up in the 1990s to protect certain stretches of shoreline from development. Man’s hand can be seen repeatedly on the way into the park – multi-million dollar houses line the cliffs, often with boats parked on private jetties outside. Numerous tiers are necessary, and mini-funicular railways called inclinators connect the upper levels with the harbour-lapped rocks.