Bobbin Head

Bobbin Head is a historic recreation area at the junction of Cowan Creek and Cockle Creek within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, in the Hornsby Shire of New South Wales, about 30 kilometres north of Sydney. Established as a public reserve in the 1890s, it features sheltered waterways, mangroves, picnic grounds, a marina and walking tracks. It is notable as the most developed visitor precinct in Australia's second-oldest national park, offering boating, bushwalking and heritage sites.

Visitors can expect a sheltered waterfront precinct within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park with calm tidal creeks, mangroves and bushland. The area centres on Empire Marina Bobbin Head, picnic grounds with barbecues, a boardwalk and the Bobbin Head Information Centre. Visitors can explore short walking tracks, hire boats or kayaks, fish from jetties, view historic structures such as the Sphinx Memorial, and observe birdlife and Aboriginal heritage sites in a managed national park setting.

Bobbin Head has been a public recreation reserve since the 1890s within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, established in 1894 as the second national park in Australia. It was developed as a popular picnic and boating destination in the early 20th century, with historic features including the Sphinx Memorial built in the 1920s as a memorial to World War I servicemen and the former Bobbin Head Inn site.

The area lies within the traditional lands of the Guringai people and contains Aboriginal heritage sites including rock engravings and middens. It remains an important natural and recreational cultural landscape for Sydney, valued for its bushland, waterways and long-standing community use for picnics and boating.