Detour through Sydney sights

The best view of Sydney is not from the top of a pylon on the Harbour Bridge or from Bennelong Point, but from Dudley Page Reserve along Military Road in Dover Heights, from Richard Graham's vintage 1964 Holden EH Premier.

A spot bypassed by the hop-on, hop-off tour buses en route to The Gap, the suburban park is a glorious vantage point from which to drink in the city skyline, the "Coat-hanger" and the Opera House, all the way to the distant Blue Mountains.

Richard is a Sydneysider born and bred, and he has parlayed his knowledge and passion for the city's culture, history and the hidden gems only a local would know into a guided tour with a difference, My Sydney Detour.

His classic set of wheels has its own colourful history, including previous ownership by the mayor of Ballarat in Victoria, to go with its gleaming authentic Portsea Blue duco, ivory cream roof and sheepskin seat covers.

"On these kinds of sunny days, especially when you have the sun over your shoulder at Bronte Beach, for example, the paintwork is an identical colour to the ocean," Richard says.

Jump in his car, as Ted Mulry once sang, and you'll share a personalised, insider's experience of Sydney while turning a few heads as you pass through the inner-city suburbs, hidden tracts of harbour-side bush, secluded foreshores and historic houses enlivened by Richard's tall tales and true.

"Fantastic car, mate," yells a bloke in a mini-bus as he pulls up alongside us at the stop lights.

"Thanks," says Richard, his elbow hanging out the window.

"I had one of those as my first car," the man says, and you can just about see his mind leaving nostalgic tracks down memory lane as he takes off into the late afternoon traffic.

As well as being a great ride, the classic Holden sedan also is a terrific icebreaker for Richard's guests, a mix of captivated foreign tourists or Australians who connect immediately with the iconic car many of them grew up with.

It has the evocative old-car smell earned over half a century of summers offset by the comfort of retrofitted air-conditioning to relieve modern-day passengers when the quarter-vent windows don't quite suffice.

"I'm a windows-down kind of guy but when it hits 35C, there's only so much windows can do," Richard says.

There are various packages for individuals and couples, who are picked up from their accommodation. Most tours start with a visit to Richard's house in Redfern, the gritty inner-city suburb in the early stages of gentrification, and often end at the foot of a billionaire's mansion in fancy-pants harbour-side Vaucluse.

"I call it from the ghetto to the glamour," Richard laughs. "I want to push people's boundaries a little bit because that's when they get something out of it."

Rolling through the streets of beachside Bondi later, Richard says his passengers still get to see the main attractions but they also visit places that stand out on merit rather than established popularity.

"It is very easy in Sydney to tick all of the boxes of what you should see on a city tour," he says.

"For someone who wants to do something different, this is top of the range, only in 1964."

Tours range from $399 for three hours to the full-day drive-lunch- walk experience for $999.

Richard's French-born wife, Berangere, runs a walking equivalent to his driving tour, My Walking Detour, which involves a ferry trip from Circular Quay to Rose Bay and an exploration of the coves, tracks and bush along an 8.4km stretch of Sydney Harbour National Park.

The beach, bush and the city loom large in both tours that respectfully acknowledge indigenous culture and highlight places where you can envisage the landscape as it was for millennia before the arrival of the First Fleet.

"That's the amazing thing about Sydney," Richard says.

"Not only do we have those three elements but they are no more than half an hour from each other."

Beautiful, oft-forgotten Parsley Bay, a sandy inner-harbour inlet surrounded by thick bush, rocks and caves, was once the northern boundary of colonial-era grandee and explorer William Wentworth's vast Vaucluse Estate.

Opened to the public in 1906, Parsley Bay is today a locals-only secret that echoes with the squawk of rainbow lorikeets and the laughter of kids darting between tree ferns and ancient eucalypts.

"The tour buses drive right past this," Richard says, in between spinning a few yarns about Wentworth's larger-than life exploits. "They drive right past."

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·Tours with

My Sydney Detour range from $399

for three hours

to the full-day drive-lunch-walk experience for $999.

Phone Richard Graham on

0404 256 256

or visit mysydneydetour.com.