My cross-decadal journey through Canada Bay continues, as I leave the somewhat creepy Breakfast Point, and enter into
Mortlake
Mortlake is one of those suburbs that I've heard of but previously had no idea where it was. Why this suburb is called "death lake" I don't know, and I was hoping not to find out.Crossing into the suburb on foot, I immediately found myself in a small commercial area,
of which the most notable point of interest was a pub - The Palace Hotel.
Always keen for some pub grub, this seemed to be as good a stop as any to escape the summer heat and grab some lunch today. Bizarrely, the layout of the pub has you ordering drinks from one room (the pubby area) and walking into a completely different room (the bistro) to order your food. I didn't let that phase me though and went for a beer (which you can see I spilt all over the wobbly table) with a spicy fried chicken burger (also containing jalapeño poppers). The burger was deliciously juicy and went down a treat.
Now with fuel in the tank, I left the pub, ready to begin my foray into Mortlake,
and passing a few more nondescript places of business as I started.
Also down this strip is a branch of Hillsong, Sydney's own megachurch.
So that's commercial Mortlake, what about residential Mortlake? Well from what I understand, Mortlake was, in a former life, a mainly industrial area. Naturally, that means the suburb is now full of new apartments,
which I followed until I reached a small riverside boardwalk overlooking a slice of the Parramatta River named Yaralla Bay.
This was a fairly smoky day, so the views are a little bit dulled,
but the gist of the place is that in Mortlake you can live in some new apartments with some not-bad views of the water.
The public walkway doesn't continue far up the bank,
so I headed back to the street,
where Mortlake was keen to show off some of its past too.
Continuing north towards the main flow of the Parramatta River, Mortlake offers up further new builds,
including this one whose logo is a duck.
Now there is one more real interesting bit of Mortlake,
which I'm skipping for now to head to a nature reserve at the suburb's northernmost tip.
Google gives me a bunch of different names for this area, including Mortlake Point, Wangal Park and Anchor Lookout Point. The important bit of information though, is that this is a pretty little riverside park where you can sit and watch the Parramatta River,
you can have a picnic,
and you can even check out an admittedly unappealing beach.
I was finally ready to head to the actual interesting bit of Mortlake, so I left my fishing rod with my drunk, skateboarding horse who was on fire,
and took this lovely little walkway along the riverbank,
where you can even spot the Sydney skyline in the distance.
This leads to another less-than-stellar beach,
and the Mortlake Car Ferry!
So two suburbs ago, in Cabarita, we learned that you can swim on a beach on the Parramatta River in Cabarita. Well, today we learned that there's a free car ferry service that you can ride across the Parramatta River too.
Also known as the Putney Punt, this ferry also accepts pedestrian traffic, which is perfect for me as I was able to ride it across the river and to my next suburb.
More information on the Mortlake Ferry (including its operating hours) can be found on the RMS Website. https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/roads/using-roads/vehicular-ferries/index.html
Mortlake: I like it. If you don't, feel free to take the car ferry out of there.
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