Y2K OK: Sydney Olympic Park

Today's post takes us to the pride of year 2000 Sydney. So pick up your Walkman, press "play" to Ricky Martin and spend 10 minutes waiting for this blog post to load over your dial-up connection while your mum yells at you that she needs to use the phone.

Sydney Olympic Park

If you're not driving, you probably get into Olympic Park by train. Olympic Park Station is way bigger than it needs to be on most days (although I'm sure it fills up after a concert). As CityRail goes, this is actually a very pleasant place to be, with lots of natural light filling the open air station.

The station drops you off in front of the CBA offices - although apparently these are closing in the next couple of years. This was a Saturday afternoon so things were pretty quiet on that front (although there was quite a large group of people playing Pokemon Go).

Just a few steps away is the 2nd largest stadium in Australia - [insert current sponsoring brand] Stadium.

There's an informational art display outside the stadium, including a cool little "thank you" listing the names of 74,000 Paralympic Volunteers of the 2000 Olympics. I quite like cute little nostalgic monuments like these.

As I walked down a long, straight road, what caught me was how quiet and how big this place is. It shows that this place was built to swallow hundreds of thousands of people and, as a result, you get somewhere really quite serene when it's not in use.

Many place names in SOP are named after Australian sporting legends. Cathy Freeman park sits just next to the Stadium and train station and seems like a great place to sit in the sun with a book.

I kept walking, past this swirly building

and ended up at this weird pointy hill and great waterside pier. As someone who likes cute birds, this is a great place to be, with lots of tiny birds scamping about.

Immediately by here is a walking and cycle path which appeared to lead into some bushland.

Being the kind of person who will stroll into the bush with merry abandon, I, of course, took the path.

The path lead me through some trees and up a hill, leading to a crest with (modest) views of the surrounding suburbs and even a peek at the CBD further away than my camera could zoom and focus on.

Continuing along the path spat me back out onto the road, but onto a much more wooded area than the more developed side of Olympic Park I started at.

Why travel all the way to Japan's Bamboo forest when you can just come to Homebush?

Bonus magpie.

I continued along this more "wild" area and turned right at these gears.

This bridge leads to The Brickpit.

The Brickpit is actually super cool. In this spot they used to dig up and manufacture bricks. Now there's a ring walk around a pond which apparently is home to many frogs (which I didn't see).

Looking down from the walk reveals a handful of (what I assume are) old buildings previously used in the local brick works.

I continued on from here into more of the endless parkland that this suburb has to offer, meeting a kids playground with a giant frog

and this huge-arsed hill with a path spiralling the edges.

For some reason I decided to expend way too much energy climbing the path up the hill. Up top I was greeted with a reasonable view of the Olympic Park facilities as well as neighbouring Rhodes.

From here I descended the spiral hill of tiredness and made my way to the waterside, via a "wetland" type bush area.

This leads to Shipwreck Lookout. Shipwreck lookout is a point at Parramatta River which gives a clear view over to Rhodes, Wentworth Point and, interestingly, a number of boats far past their use-by date.