A Month of Beaches Part 8: Cabarita

Welcome to our final Beach Month instalment. Rather than heading to Sydney's famous ocean shores today, we're doing something different and checking out a beach on Parramatta River.

Cabarita

Cabarita's a suburb in that weird middle bit of Sydney which isn't really part of any proper region. Real estate agents will tell you this is the Inner West, but we all know that they're about as trustworthy as used car salesmen. At the same time, it's a bit of a stretch to call it Western Sydney. I'm going to just go ahead and call this region Canada Bay, after the area's local council. 

Being that Cabarita is on Parramatta River, the absolute best way to get in is to take a super-cheap Sunday ferry west from the city, and enjoy the views along the way. This river cruise (sitting on the top deck of a fancy Captain Cook Cruises boat no less) cost me a grand total of 28c. Who said travel's expensive?

After 29 minutes, my boat docked in the suburb.

Cabarita Ferry Wharf is located in a park conveniently called Cabarita Park. This is a good-sized, riverside park where you can sit and watch the flow of the river,

you can have a barbeque or picnic under the many trees,

and you can even enjoy a riverside beach.

Now, don't get me wrong, if you're a tourist with only a couple days in Sydney, you shouldn't come and swim in this shelly bit of sand on the Parramatta River instead of our world famous beaches. 

But if you're a Sydneysider who, like me, didn't know this was here, Cabarita Beach is definitely worth checking out, even if just for the novelty of it all.

If the idea of swimming in Parramatta River isn't the most appealing, rest assured that there's also a public pool here you can visit instead. 

Also of interest in this park is a public table tennis table and giant chess board,

and these three sculptural doodads named The Observatory due to each having some sort of weather-o-meter.

Now, most people visiting Cabarita Park would leave by driving their cars away. I'm not most people, so instead I took this riverside walk into an estate of new units. 

These turned out to be a bit little funny looking, 

but I guess it's more about the view looking out than the view looking in.

The riverside pathway soon ended and I had to head inland once more by taking this path. This took me past what appeared to be an old mansion (at least what was visible behind the rich-people fencing). 

The path leads to some stairs before landing you in the thick of the new housing development.

A few more steps through is all it takes to get into what I'll call Old Cabarita. The houses of Old Cabarita for the most part are an un-notable mix of older, single-storey brick homes,

with the occasional new build thrown in for good measure.

That is, apart from these two more unconventional designs who just happened to be next door neighbours. 

Past these houses is Kendall Reserve, a standard issue suburban park with nice trees and a kid's playground. This wouldn't be worth mentioning, apart from the fact that crossing this park took me into my next suburb.

Cabarita: A beach on Parramatta River. Who knew.

And that's the last suburb of 2019, thanks for playing along! Sunday's post will be a pause in our regular programming, with a visit from a certain gilded bird.