Bridging the Gap: Greystanes

Take me home
To a place
Where I belong
Western Sydney

Greystanes

In America, they have the concept of the flyover state. These are those forgettable states in the middle of the country that you just fly over and never have a reason to actually step foot in (e.g. your Kansases or your Ohios, to pick on two at random).

For Sydney, I'm inventing the term "driveover suburb".

Greystanes, sitting between Pendle Hill, Pemulwuy and South Wentworthville, is cut through by a few very important Sydney roads, namely the M4, the Great Western Highway, and Cumberland Highway.

That means that thousands of people drive through the suburb every day.

And yet, when's the last time anyone told you they went to Greystanes (apart from this idiot with a blog about Sydney)?

Coming by car today, I turned off of the Great Western Highway to land on a residential street and enter the suburb.

First impressions? As far as Western Sydney suburbia goes, Greystanes is nicer than you'd expect.

Your average house here seems to be from the mid-twentieth century, but there appear to be two main types:

First, there are your modest but reasonably well kept examples,

second, you have your larger and slightly more... ethnic examples. I don't know why, but these older, two storey, dark red brick houses always give me that "old Greek or Lebanese family" vibe.

St Paul's Church, at the end of this same street, gives me a similar vibe, although looking at their website they do not appear to cater to any particular ethnic group.

According to Wikipedia, many of the early residents to the suburb came from Malta, which perhaps is where the architectural vibe I'm getting comes from... or maybe I'm just projecting.

Regardless, as I drove through the suburb, I continued seeing more of the same,

with special call out going to this one I'm dubbing "pillar city".

Now, Greystanes does have a particular gem which I had marked on my map, so I continued driving through the suburb to get there.

On the way, I passed this oddly located chicken hatchery.

After a few minutes driving through residential Greystanes, I arrived to my waypoint, this nondescript bit of bush by some houses.

I entered by using this conveniently felled pole.

In this strip of bushland is the late 19th century Boothtown Aqueduct. Long out of service, this interesting slab of concrete once transported water from the nearby Prospect Reservoir.

Today however, apart from just being really cool to look at, it now serves as part of a network of walking and cycle paths from Prospect Reservoir, through Greystanes and continuing on all over Western Sydney.

You even get a view of the neighbouring houses from up top.

I'm not the only one who thinks it's swell. On my way out, some bridal cars arrived to take their wedding photos at the aqueduct.

Departing, I continued my drive through the suburb.

I stopped at this small strip of shops offering up mainly pet things with cute signage.

Confusingly, this part of Greystanes around pet-shop-alley has decided to name its streets after flowers. Here's Camellia, Carnation and Tulip, but Dahlia, Jasmine and Hyacinth (Bucket) also feature here, amongst others.

It was now time to leave the suburb. My drive out saw nothing else of interest, including this completely unremarkable shopping centre, which for some reason features two LJ Hooker offices.