5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Berowra
You know how every suburb has those little secrets you only discover after living there for a while? The stuff that never makes it into the real estate listings? Well, after years of calling Berowra home, these are the things I find myself telling newcomers over and over.
CoHo Berowra Isn't Just a Café - It's the Town Square
Let's be real - if you want to know what's happening in Berowra, you don't need to check Facebook. You go to CoHo Berowra on Turner Road and eavesdrop on the 7 am crowd. That's where you'll hear about:
Which tradie shows up when they say they will
The best backyard chicken breeds for our climate (apparently, Silkies are bulletproof)
Why Mrs. Jenkins on Barnetts Rd makes the best lemon butter this side of the Hawkesbury
Pro tip: Their iced lattes are good, but the real move is ordering a "small strong one" like the retired builders do.
CoHo Berowra
2. The Woodchop Festival is Our Super Bowl
Forget the Harbour Bridge fireworks—if you want to see Berowra at its best, mark September 6th, 2025, on your calendar.
The Woodchop Festival is where:
Grown men who've never held an axe suddenly become lumberjack experts (just kidding!)
Kids discover the ancient art of lamington-eating competitions
You'll finally meet that neighbour you've been waving to for years
The best part? Watching the local Berowra Apex Club members flip pancakes with military precision while debating whether this year's wood stack is "properly dry".
Berowra Woodchop Festival
3. Nature Does the Heavy Lifting Here
We've got postcard-worthy bushwalks, sure. But the real magic happens when you:
Follow the lyrebird calls behind the school (they've perfected imitating car alarms)
Catch the 6:45 am fog rolling through the valley like a slow-motion wave
Discover the unofficial dog swimming hole where every Labrador thinks they're Michael Phelps
Bonus: A particular rock on the fire trail gets perfect afternoon sun for lazy reading sessions. You'll know it when you see it.
Sunset over Berowra Valley
4. Winter is Secretly the Best Season
When the temperature drops:
Club Berowra becomes the unofficial living room for half the suburb
CoHo starts doing hot chocolates with "optional extras" (wink)
Morning walks reveal frost patterns so pretty you'll forget to complain about the cold
True story: Last July, I saw three neighbours stop to photograph the same icy spiderweb outside the medical centre. There is no shame in it.
Club Berowra
5. The Real Community is in the Little Things
Like how:
There's always someone leaving excess lemons or cucumbers on their fence
The Turner Rd carpark has become an unofficial plant cutting exchange
You'll never need a Ring doorbell when you've got retired Ray across the street keeping tabs on everything
The Bottom Line
Berowra looks good on paper - great views, good schools, all that.
But what you can't quantify is the way the afternoon light hits the gum trees, or how the whole suburb smells like fireplaces in winter, or why running into the same people at CoHo every morning somehow never gets old.
Want to know the best street for trick-or-treating? Where to find the hidden blackberry patches? Which neighbour has the secret recipe for those amazing Anzac biscuits?
Come have a coffee with the locals - we've got stories.
Better still, buy a house in Berowra and become one of us.
“Bill Vasiliadis”