Metropolitan Hamlet: Edgecliff

Today I'm dipping my toes into the Eastern Suburbs, so hop in your Range Rover and get your personal assistant to read this post to you.

Edgecliff

Edgecliff is a small suburb almost immediately east of the city, which means its only a 10 minute train ride from Central. If you've read this blog before you'll know that that's how I got here today.

As a part of the Eastern Suburbs line to Bondi, the underground platforms that comprise Edgecliff Station have a different feel to most of the rest of the network. Even the font seems a little funky.

The station itself is attached to a small shopping centre, but first I headed to the bus station on the roof. I can be a bit of a nerd when it comes to public transport, so I find a roof-top bus station to be pretty cool.

I can't tell you how "connected" this particular bus station is, but I like it when Sydney bothers to connect its pieces of transport.

Heading back down the stairs and into the local shops, it's extremely easy to forget that you're literally 2.5km from the city. Edgecliff shopping centre is really going for the "village feel" and they do pull it off.

You've got your newsagents,

a great looking butcher,

and, of course, an old bloke who cuts keys and fixes shoes.

The butcher was having a little bit of a sausage sizzle and I couldn't say no. 5 bucks is on the steep side for a sausage sizzle but hey we are in the Eastern Suburbs after all. To be fair to the butcher, they did use an actual bread roll, and the sausage was pretty high quality. (And yes, the onions were under the snag).

The shops ejected me onto the main road (New South Head Rd - one of the main arteries into Eastern Sydney). Here, Edgecliff does let out that it's not a quaint hamlet, but is indeed an inner city suburb. I love a good skyline-peek.

Just a few steps down the road is this photo shop. Interestingly, they have a picture of Malcolm Turnbull in the window by their advertisement for LinkedIn portraits. I'm not sure if they're claiming that they took old Malcolm's photo for his LinkedIn, but it is a possibility considering that until very recently, this was the former Prime Minster's seat. (On a similar but unrelated note, I visited Myspace about a year ago and found out that Kevin Rudd is still in my top 8 friends from the Kevin07 days. I wonder if I should make a MySpace for this blog, maybe we can bring it back.)

I took a turn off of the main road and was immediately reminded of a reason why I love Sydney. You can be walking distance from the CBD and yet somehow you're suddenly in the bush. I'm sure the amount of foliage here means that our Edgecliffians get their fair share of spiders at home, but that's a worthwhile trade if you ask me.

Just a little bit further are these very pretty terraces. I'm not normally too big on terraced houses personally (stop being so wishy-washy and live in a house or an apartment, would you?) but the ones here are beautifully well maintained which is always nice to see.

A small alleyway off terracetopia leads to what looks to be straight up wilderness. In actuality, it is a park named "Trumper" (unrelated to Donald I presume) and is also an entry point onto our next suburb.