When it comes to public parks, Sydney has a plethora of choice.

If it is an urban park you are after, Sydney Park is full of surprises. It's fascinating backstory - as a former brickworks - continues to intrigue, and the more recent fight to save it from a WestConnex gouging showed how loved it is by locals and regular guests. Not to mention it's a favourite place for budding cyclists to learn to ride.

Lane Cove National Park on the North Shore, is a perfect place to pedal and paddle. While the Turrumburra paddlewheeler of my childhood may have gone, the river is a perfect place for watersports close to the city.

For 20 years, from 1976 until 1996, the paddlewheeler plied the tributaries of the Lane Cove River Park before being relocated to Windsor in 1996. But cyclists will tell you it is a good safe place to ride a bike and, compared to doing flat laps at Centennial Park, it is bushier and hillier. Even further north, the Ku-ring-gai National Park's rainforest, rugged coast and red ochre rocks (and reddish coloured sandy beaches) has an extraordinary Aboriginal history worthy of deeper understanding. It holds a special place in my heart, because as a child I saw my first echidna here, curled up on the red dirt roadside.

To the south, the Royal National Park has world-class beach, bush walks and safe waterholes. A national park since 1879, it is the world's second oldest national park (after Yellowstone National Park in the US), taking on the royal moniker in 1955 after Queen Elizabeth II's first visit to Australia the previous year.

To the west - the vast expanse and beauty of the Blue Mountains is best known to visitors from outside city. I took one there just recently. Of course we went to Echo Point for the obligatory Three Sisters/Jamison Valley viewing, but the less visited parts of the park were just as scene stealing: Empress Falls, near the Conservation Hut, Wentworth Falls (even with its busloads) the Charles Darwin walk from Wentworth Falls Station, and the gobsmacking view of the Grose River Valley from Evans Lookout. One of my favourite Blue Mountains experiences was camping out overnight in the Blue Gum Forest when a thunderstorm hit.

Parramatta Park has, for more than 160 years, served the people of western Sydney in much the same way Centennial Parklands does for those in the east. With the added bonus of Old Government House, just one of the many heritage-listed buildings that pepper the park, the park's fertile soil saved the colony of NSW from starvation, growing abundant crops that the Sydney soil could not. Again, this is an oasis for cyclists and pedestrians. Bicentennial Park at Homebush, too.

Sydney abounds with smaller more manicured parklands: Cooper Park, Woollahra, Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta, Ashfield Park, Hyde Park and Barangaroo Reserve. But it's the wilder open spaces within city limits that bring the bush to the big smoke and help maintain our sanity.

Do you have a favourite Sydney statue? Please let us know at hpitt@smh.com.au