For today, we're in yet another "real-estate catalogue" suburb. This one was pleasantly surprising though.
Wolli Creek
Wolli Creek is a suburb sitting just by the airport. In fact, it's so close to the airport that you can save yourself a tidy $14.87 in airport station access fees by walking around 25 minutes from Wolli Creek station to the international terminal.I didn't walk here from the airport though, a 10 minute train ride from Central was enough to get me in.
In Sydney these days, it's common for stations to be surrounded by high-rise apartments. Wolli Creek takes this even further, with huge numbers of apartments surrounding the station.
As soon as you exit the station,
you're right in the thick of it, with a small commercial area at the base of the apartments.
A lot of people aren't fans of these high density pockets of Sydney, but (at first glance anyway) this block just by Wolli Creek station nails the brief. The bustle of the area on the late Sunday morning that I visited is only evidence of this.
Immediately behind these apartments, you can follow a pathway to this chapel.
Or, if you're not the churchgoing type, you can take another path through these lush bushes,
and find Discovery Park.
Discovery Park is a green space where you can do Tai Chi or chuck a frisbee,
you can have a BBQ,
or you can take a stroll along Cooks River.
Also of interest in this park is the beautiful old Tempe House, dating back to the 1830s.
I left the park, passing a fence overlooking Wolli Creek station,
and continuing through the apartments, as I headed east towards my next suburb.
In a past life, Wolli Creek was once an industrial suburb. There is still some evidence of this, with the occasional warehouse still standing,
but most of these have since been claimed by the property boom of the past decade.
Curiously, the further you are from the station (and we're not talking that far at all), the more dowdy the apartments begin to feel. I can't quite place my finger on why that is.
Whatever it is, I continued further down the street and entered the next suburb.
Wolli Creek: A well presented argument for high rise living (at least the bit by the station is).
I live here! The pedestrianised area by the station really is very good, and it's great having the large park (better than locking the space away in individual backyards). The main thing letting the suburb down is the street layout, which still cues cars to try and speed around, despite the large numbers of pedestrians, and often footpaths aren't wide enough to deal with the (excellent) amount of foot traffic from the apartments.
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