Thanks for the Park Mr Fagan: Galston

Our next suburb scrapes the delicate northern edge of "actual suburban Sydney with things in it" and "horses and cows". I wouldn't quite call this this one Sydney by Technicality, but we're definitely close.

Galston

Galston is a suburb in the semi-rural bits of Northwestern Sydney, sitting around forty km northwest of the city, or around an eight hour walk. I hadn't eaten enough Aldi brand knock off Weetbix to attempt this walk today, but thankfully I had a car to bring me in to Galston's gum tree-lined borders.

I really had one point of interest that I wanted to visit today, but I couldn't help but make a few additional pit stops as I drove through the suburb.

Immediately over Galston's borders, I found the very generically named Galston Recreation Reserve, marked by this very fine car park.

It turns out that Galston Recreation Reserve is actually a very apt description of this place, with a skatepark,

a softball pitch,

a big old multi-purpose circle of grass,

and even the local indoor pool. It's good to see that the people of Galston enjoy the outdoors. At least in theory - apart from a kids softball game there wasn't too much activity here today.

Continuing on, I really got to see the not-quite-Sydney-by-Technicality environment of Galston. Here's a fruit farm,

and a rose farm.

With keen interest, I actually headed down the long driveway into the rose nursery.

As you would imagine, here they sell roses.

Some of them are very pretty.

And some of them have unusual names, such as Parole, and Governor Marie Bashir.

If you're in need of potted roses, I can think of no better place.

Anyway, I didn't want to dilly-dally in this post, so from here I beelined to what actually brought me to Galston in the first place. That being said, I did pass the very interesting Galston Library on the way, who have set up in a former church!

Anyway, what was I here in Galston to see?

Fagan Park.

Fagan Park is an incredible seventy hectare park out here in Galston, and is full of many things.

Yes, there are BBQ and picnic areas, but that's fairly standard.

Kids play equipment? Every park has that.

What about an 1800s homestead and farm? Now I'm listening.

You see, Fagan Park was once a private farm owned by the Fagan family who settled in Sydney from Ireland in the 1800s. The estate donated the land to the council in the 1980s for use as a park - more information on the history can be found here.

Part of the old houses and equipment remain on the land as an open air museum of sorts. (There's also an actual museum which wasn't open on the day of my visit - they open on Tuesdays and the first Sunday of each month according to the sign).

Go through a gate behind the Homestead and you'll hit my personal highlight of this park, the Eco Garden.

This is a surprisingly large garden set up to educate on sustainable gardening, and is full of what seems to be endless fruit trees of all varieties, from mulberries, to limes, to macadamias, to bananas.

But what really makes this garden for me? The numerous benches and picnic tables overlooking the gorgeous lush rolling hills of "suburban" Galston.

Are you after an excellent date spot? Organise a picnic here and I guarantee you'll make up for leaving your socks on the floor.

Leaving the Eco Garden, it was time to head to arguably the best known bit of Fagan Park.

Fagan Park's pièce de résistance is the Garden of Many Nations. This does what it says on the tin, featuring plants from all around the world.

Each of the gardens is large enough to be a small park in and of themselves, so I won't show everything in this blog post (plus then you won't come and visit for yourself), so here's just a taster.

You've got North America,