Street Art and Low Flying Planes: St Peters

This is my first Inner West post and while this suburb is not as cool as some of it's neighbours, it does have it's own unique flavour. Let's explore.

St Peters

St Peters is a suburb sandwiched between the airport and it's trendier neighbour Newtown. Conveniently, the suburb is only a 7 minute train ride from Central, and that's how I got here today. 

The train station is a fairly standard minor Sydney station, but you immediately feel that you're in a bit of an industrial area, with grey buildings all around and a generous offering of graffiti.

I exited the station from its Southern end and was instantly slapped in the face with street art. 

Just down from here is St Peters' own graffiti alley, a small street called May Lane. 

I particularly loved this homage to Sydney trains, a gorgeous painting in its own right. 

After ooh-ahhing the street art, I made my way into St Peters proper to see what I could see.

I found this "playground" hilarious. Come on guys, you need more than a park bench on 2 square metres of grass to call something a playground. 

The streets around the station are fairly quiet, without a lot of human or vehicle traffic, and have what I would describe as a "grungy" feel. 

You've got tiny terraces

a whole heap of weird art (is this van a art?)

and plenty of construction.

Eventually, the streets spat me out onto the Princes Highway - St Peters' major artery. Even this so-called highway is surprisingly quiet. 

Save for the odd apartment block, this suburb is strangely undeveloped, despite being so close to the city and other happening locations.

I started to get an idea why.

St Peters is super close to the airport.

Planes are loud.

Ah.

I continued along the Princes Highway until I eventually reached an oasis. This is St Peters Anglican Church, a surprising bit of history in an otherwise urban suburb. It was built in 1838 and is rather lovely, if you ask me. 

I didn't want to spend the rest of the suburb walking along the highway so I made my way off the main road and into some residential streets. 

Here, I was met with even more street art (can you detect a theme?), as well many terraced houses on leafy streets, a staple of this part of the city.

I did enjoy this oh-so-Sydney "you can't cross here" fence, in front of an unfinished grey cement wall. I crossed here anyway just to spite them.

To get to my next suburb, I made my way back out onto the Princes Highway one final time. 

This is the site of the Westconnex exit into St Peters and is every Inner-Westie's favourite infrastructure project. (For those not in the know, Westconnex is a highway tunnel connecting the M4 highway in the West to the M5 highway in the South of the city.)

St Peters: Come here if you like street art. Don't if you don't (because there's not much else here).