Even with clouds in the sky, it's hard to not enjoy yourself when you're on one of Sydney's many harbourside suburbs. This is the gorgeous
Lavender Bay
From Milsons Point, the boardwalk by Luna Park turns into a pathway somewhere a little bit more green, save for North Sydney's towering office blocks in the background.
This is actually a fantastic little waterside walk, with benches and trees,
peeks of an old train line,
and, of course, the view of our Harbour.
But there's also something a little more unique here.
You see, this pathway forms "Comic Walk",
and as such, dotted all along the pathway are small sculptures of Australian comic characters.
As someone who grew up watching the '90s Blinky Bill cartoon, I actually had no idea that Blinky Bill was originally from a book in the 1930s. How about that.
Anyway, the walk eventually gets a bit wharfier,
and takes you to a spot where you can look at the houses of some people who are fancier than me,
at a small park which pays homage to some of the area's local history, and of course serves up the solid view you come to expect from these places.
From here, I headed through under the old rail bridge which sits immediately behind the park and wharf.
This takes you to a park with plenty of trees, a damp looking bench or two, and even a few brush turkeys for good measure.
Luckily, there's plenty of parking cliff-side for your cars and digger here.
If you live nearby, you can take one of a few sets of stairs to get here instead.
I tried one of the sets and found some rather nice slanted streets, but didn't explore this bit too much as I was heading to another area of the suburb instead.
Backtracking under the rail bridge,
I instead took a different trip through the tunnel,
up these stairs,
and to the suburb's most well known attraction.
This is Wendy's Secret Garden.
It's a lush, multi-layered garden, built and made available to the public by local woman Wendy Whiteley.
It's full of plenty of little nooks to sit and enjoy in relative privacy.
And that's despite how well known this place is. Despite the Secret Garden name, this place is no secret, and if you look up just about any Sydney "nice things to do", "where to take a date" or "hidden gems" list, this lovely little place will be on there.
I came in from the bottom end of the gardens. If you follow the snaking stairs all the way to the top,
you arrive at a much more open patch of grass where you can sit and take in the harbour views in amongst all the beautiful old homes in the area.
Leaving the park, I went to scope out some of the old buildings before I headed to my next suburb.
And the less-than-handful of streets on the northern end of Lavender Bay are absolutely full of them, between the churches,
and houses,
including this amazing couple which transported me to Europe,
apart from a certain coathanger in the background.
But the modern buildings of the next suburb were waiting,
so I took these conveniently placed stairs and left the beautiful Lavender Bay.
Lavender Bay: Sydney's finest.
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