The best MTB trails in Belmont Wetlands State Park

Warners Bay Foreshore follows the edge of Lake Macquarie with wide shared paths, parks, cafés, and long stretches of open water views along the lakeside. The flat waterfront route is popular for walking and cycling, especially around sunset when the light reflects across the lake and sailing boats move through the bay. Picnic areas, playgrounds, public art, and plenty of benches line the foreshore, making it an easy place to slow down between longer walking sections.

Sky Pig is one of the most recognisable sculptures along the Warner's Bay Foreshore, perched beside the lake with open water views behind it. Created by artist Guan Wei as part of the Creative Lake Sculpture Trail, the bronze flying pig was designed to bring a sense of fun and good luck to the waterfront walk. It’s an easy landmark to spot along the shared foreshore path and has become one of the most photographed artworks around Lake Macquarie.

Located on the eastern shore of Lake Macquarie, Eleebana Lions Park is a lakeside reserve connecting into the waterfront shared path toward Warners Bay and Speers Point. The park includes picnic shelters, barbecues, toilets, and direct lake access, with Red Bluff Boardwalk beginning nearby.

Lake Macquarie is the largest coastal saltwater lake in Australia, forming a broad, open water body surrounded by suburbs, parkland, and small inlets. From the shoreline, views stretch across long distances of water, often with boats, jetties, and changing light reflecting off the surface. It makes for a beautiful, breezy walk.

This section of the Great North Walk follows the foreshore of Lake Macquarie through Speers Point, combining lakeside shared paths with more urban parkland surroundings. Compared to the bushier sections further south on the track, this stretch feels much more open, with regular access to cafés, playgrounds, picnic areas, and waterfront reserves. The route links through Speers Point Park and continues along the lake edge toward Warners Bay and Newcastle.

Bathers Way is a 6-kilometre coastal walk in Newcastle, connecting Merewether Ocean Baths to Nobbys Beach, that runs right along the shoreline. It passes a string of beaches, ocean baths, and lookouts, with beautiful sweeping ocean views and a mix of paved paths, boardwalks, and clifftop sections. Along the way, the route combines natural scenery with layers of local history, including Aboriginal cultural connections to the coastline, shipwrecks and wartime sites, making it one of the region’s most iconic walks.

Nobbys Beach is one of Newcastle’s most prominent and accessible beaches, nestled at the entrance to the Hunter River near the iconic Nobbys Head and lighthouse. It’s well known as one of the safer swimming spots in the city, popular with families, beginner surfers, and walkers enjoying the adjacent breakwall and coastal paths. Surrounded by open parkland, benches, picnic areas, and shaded shelters, the beach is a great place to relax and spend the day, with beautiful views of passing ships. It is also a great place to start or finish the Bathers Way coastal walk.

Awabakal Nature Reserve was established in January 1978 and spans a whopping 228 hectares. Dogs are not allowed in the reserve, but it's a great place for kids and is pram accessible via the paved Fernleigh Track. From July to October, wildflowers send the park into a colorful spectacle. The reserve is home to dense forests, ocean vistas, lagoons, restrooms, and picnic benches.