Back to the Womb: Westmead

Today's post takes me to the suburb of my birth.

Westmead

In the current public transport plans, Westmead is supposed to be the terminus for both a metro and light rail, so I thought I'd see what all the fuss is about. (I wrote to Gladys and suggested we instead bring back the monorail but she said it was more of a Shelbyville idea.)

None of that exists yet so it was back to good old Sydney Trains to drop me off into Westmead.

As soon as I arrived, I could smell a light but distinct aroma of Indian food in the air. I couldn't see any Indian restaurants so I could only suspect that the neighbours were cooking. According to the 2016 Census, around 50% of Westmedians reported having a parent born in The Subcontinent which might explain the recipes being cooked.

It was lunchtime so I headed over to the small shopping village just next to the station. This place is a true celebration of multicultural Sydney.

In this small shopping complex I found:

An Indian biryani restaurant
A Vietnamese bakery
A Thai restaurant
Indian hair salon (cutely named Desi Touch)
A middle-eastern manoosh and pizza shop.
A Bottle-O (straya)

As a "youth of Middle-Eastern appearance" as the news likes to call me, I couldn't resist the call of a manoushe on this gloomy day. For those who don't know, manoushe is essentially bread with zaatar (oregano) and olive oil on it. This particular place sells them for $2 (bargain).

I splurged this day. $5 bought me a 50% zaatar, 50% cheese, 100% delicious manoushe. Points were deducted for cutting it into pizza slices - I like to fold it over itself and the slices made this difficult. Call it an Arab quesadilla.

Because I'm always prepared, I had a KFC towelette in my pocket to de-olive-oil myself before continuing my journey.

As I left the shopping area, I passed by this ultrasound place which apparently does 3D and 4D ultrasounds of your baby. Yeah I don't know either.

Just by here is a Western Sydney University building which reminds me a lot of American schools you see on TV.

Interestingly, this Westmead "campus" of the uni appears to be almost entirely this building and a car park.

I continued north towards the hospital. On the way I crossed a "T-way". For those not in the know, the T-ways are essentially separated bus lanes which let buses run on their own roads. It's basically a budget train line and is a great (albeit unsexy) way to bring in public transport.

I made it to the hospital. Very hospital like.

It felt a bit too suspicious to stand in front of the hospital taking photos so I kept heading north.

Interestingly, there's a whole lot of construction which seems to be going up here. I'm not sure if this is expanding the "health district" of Westmead (looking at the map what I thought was one hospital is actually multiple) or is simply more new residential apartments.

At this stage I thought it would be best to backtrack south (my next suburb is in that direction after all) so I took a stroll into the residential streets just by the hospital.

Interestingly, this side of Westmead is full of entirely near identical medium density older apartments.

Apart from this place - A E S T H E T I C C

I do like that this person has hung their sarees to dry off their balcony. You can't do that in the Eastern suburbs.

If you keep heading south you eventually hit the train line.

I actually had to cheat and momentarily head into neighbouring Parramatta to cross over (don't tell on me).

These ducks are technically Parramatta ducks but sue me. I've even thrown in some bonus ibises.

Once safely back in Westmead, I continued south from the train line. The south end of Westmead is much more low density than the many apartments I saw on the north end.

I saw a mix of older houses.