Mansion Mania: Pymble

Here's a suburb that I've heard of but know nothing about.

Pymble

As a suburb, Pymble's one you just straight up don't think about. Sitting somewhere in the city's north, it's on both the Pacific Highway and the North Shore Train Line, the latter taking around 40 minutes from Central.

Last I left you, I had just strolled out of St Ives with merry abandon, crossing the border into Pymble, and I was still on the very busy Mona Vale Road.

As soon as I crossed over, Pymble began characterising itself as the kind of place with big and fancy houses, nestled in trees, even on the main road.

They also have some sort of religious retreat with a big building on wide grounds. Fancy.

Sick of inhaling the fumes of Mona Vale Road, I turned off to begin exploring the suburb's residential and decidedly leafy core.

Here, Pymble had to let me know about its generous share of big houses behind bigger fences, such as this number.

Some (still nice) houses have opted for some more modest fences,

but it seems that just about everyone here has a lot of brick behind their fences.

I continued along,

past the Singh family's house,

to find even more mansions - although this particular one was hidden in amongst its elaborate grounds.

Also rather beautiful is this sandstone church across the road from the above mansion.

As I neared the end of the road (Telegraph Road, for those of you playing along at home), Pymble tried its hand at some apartments too. This modern block of flats, while nice enough by themselves, do look a bit funny next to all of the old and grand houses I passed so far.

Dead tired, I reached the Pacific Highway,

another very busy thoroughfare.

It was here that I ran into the historic Ku Ring Gai Town Hall building. After two minutes of Googling I couldn't find out how old this building is, but it looks pretty old so I'm going to say that it's 800 years old, making it the oldest standing building in Australia. Impressive.

I continued on southbound down the highway, passing Mr Burns' house,

and eventually reaching Pymble shopping "village". Why do places in Sydney keep insisting they're a village?

Pymble village turned out to be a very quiet strip of shops with zero activity on a Sunday afternoon.

It was at this point that I realised that the very infrequent bus which leaves from here and goes to my next suburb was arriving in one minute. I immediately said goodbye to Pymble and jumped on.

I didn't appear to miss much by bailing early - some main road residential construction,

and the train station.

Riveting stuff people.

Pymble: A solid suburb for house-spotting, not so much for shopping.