The fictional Pirriwee Peninsula where Big Little Lies unfolds isn't a real place, but Sydney novelist Liane Moriarty has a good idea which beach it resembles. Fans are convinced it's Avalon Beach, an hour north of the city centre, and she gives them plenty of ammunition: the two giant pine trees she describes in the books really exist there, and local surfers climb them to check the surf. In a recent interview with Condé Nast Traveler around the release of her sequel, Big Little Truths, she explained why the northern beaches keep pulling her back as a setting.
The appeal, she says, is the mix. These communities squeeze wealthy waterfront homeowners and families doing it tough into the same school gates, creating exactly the sort of enclosed world — she calls it an 'insular peninsula' — that Agatha Christie loved for her mysteries. The glossy surface with trouble behind closed doors is the whole engine of her plotting, and it's true to life on Sydney's northern beaches, where she has lived herself.
Interestingly, the HBO adaptation moved the story to Monterey, California, with a notably richer cast of mansions. Moriarty says that reshaped the sequel slightly — characters like Renata, played by Laura Dern, earned bigger roles — but the books stayed firmly Australian. Meanwhile, her readers keep trying to visit places that don't exist: people have contacted Sydney's tourism board asking how to reach Scribbly Gum Island, the fictional setting of her novel The Last Anniversary, inspired by a real island she visited on the Hawkesbury River.
For travellers, her personal Sydney shortlist is genuinely useful. She loves anywhere around the harbour, especially the Royal Botanic Garden, which hosts an outdoor cinema each January with a screen that rises out of the water — her family's verdict is 'why would you live anywhere else?'. Balmoral Beach is her pick closer to the city; Avalon and Balmoral aside, she also namechecks the northern beaches generally. For stays, she recommends the Shangri-La Sydney for its harbour views, and for coffee she sends people to Kirribilli, where you can sip with a view of the Opera House. She even researched a spa for Nine Perfect Strangers at the Golden Door, in bushland north of the city — though it doesn't offer the hallucinogens featured in the book.
Her other Australian writing base is worth a detour: Hobart, Tasmania, her husband's hometown, which she describes as peaceful and home to a small writing community. She set part of her novel Here One Moment there.
So if you've read the books or watched the series, the northern beaches make an easy, rewarding add-on to a Sydney trip — a string of surf towns, headland walks and oddly hierarchised school car parks, just an hour from the Opera House. Just don't expect to find Pirriwee on the map.
