April Fool's 2020: St Kilda

What's this? A suburb post on a Wednesday?

St Kilda

St Kilda is a suburb in the outer reaches of Southwest Sydney, approximately 9 hours drive from Central, or 11 hours by train and tram light rail (you have to change in this weird suburb called Melbourne).

Bizarrely, I wasn't able to use my Opal card for this journey.

The tram light rail dropped me off at a cement-heavy tram light rail station, where I was able to start exploring this far-reaching suburb.

Up the road from the station, I passed a US-themed mural advertising a game where people hit small balls really far with a metal stick.

As well as St Kilda City Hall, a very attractive US-state-capitol feeling building. The flags were at half mast today, I don't know why.

Crossing the road from the city hall,

I started on residential St Kilda.

This place had a very Inner West feel, with trees along the footpath,

some two-toned old apartments,

terraces,

and this funky old thing.

This led me to St Kilda City Gardens.

These are botanical gardens, with lots of space to walk around,

plenty of interesting plants,

one of these,

public chess boards (BYO pieces I assume?),

and a conservatory by an excellent lake,

populated with excellent ducks,

and some also-ok pigeons (including one albino).

What a pleasant place.

Outside, St Kilda kept offering its best, with more interesting old houses,

and a community notice board offering literally every service known to humanity, such as in-house cat feeding, a self-love retreat in Bali, nannies, and drawing classes. I get the impression that St Kildans have a fair bit of disposable income.

Further up the street is the start of the suburb's commercial area.

There's too much else in the suburb to cover this quarter, so highlights include the original Lentil as Anything, the pay-what-you-want vegetarian restaurant (you may recall I visited the Newtown branch in 2019),

and someone looking for tasteful nudes.

Continuing on, I passed some more street art,

grandma's shopping trip gone wrong,

and an abandoned boot,

before reaching my next point of interest, "Veg Out" Community Garden.

From what I gather, this is a place where locals can get a plot to plant vegetables,

or raise fluffy chickens.

If you're a fan of eclectic collections of everything, this place is for you.

If you continue past the community gardens, you reach some more gardens, these ones far more open.

Here, you can visit St Kilda's most famous attraction, Luna Park. I've always thought the St Kilda Luna Park face is significantly scarier than its Milsons Point brother. Thankfully, the park was closed today, so I was not at risk of being eaten by the face.

One thing I never knew about this place, however, is that there's a beautiful old art deco theatre just next door, the Palais Theatre.

Also of interest here are some beautiful old apartment blocks,

and a walkway with views of the ocean,

which you can follow to get to the shore.

Being a cold and overcast day, very typical in this region of Sydney, today wasn't exactly beach weather. The clouds do make for some decent photos though.

This is especially true if you take St Kilda Pier,

from where you can get some decent views of the nearby CBD of the previously mentioned suburb.

Interestingly, if you come here at sunset, penguins and something called rakali (which Google tells me are water rats) can be seen by the pier, according to this sign.

Exploring a suburb as exciting as St Kilda is always enough to build up a good appetite, so I backtracked down the pier and to the shore.

Here, I met the amazing Hotel Esplanade,

just next door of which was Ichi Ni - a Japanese restaurant.

I thought I'd call out that I took a picture of me scratching my knee but I thought it was far too lame to use.

Anyway, this turned out to be a great little spot for a late lunch,

where myself and my travel companion who I failed to mention until now enjoyed some very respectable bento boxes.

After the very satisfying lunch, there was somehow even more to explore in St Kilda. Thankfully, all of the rest was on the way to getting back to our hotel home.

Heading up Fitzroy Street, one of the suburb's semi-main arteries,

I found myself in another commercial area, this one less lively than the one I skimmed through before.

Here, you have plenty more eateries, including dumplings, kebabs and vegan noodles,

more murals,

and plenty of colour around the Victorian Pride Centre

as well as some scenes lifted straight out of Europe.

To finally leave this behemoth of a suburb, I went through a small portion of the very large, multi-suburb touching Albert Park.

Here, I found some more colour to fill out the gloomy sky,

as well as a 300-500 year old tree which marks the site where Aboriginal ceremonies were held prior to European settlement.

I may have stuffed this up, but I believe this one is the tree.

Thankfully, from here only an under road tunnel sat between me and my departure of the suburb.

St Kilda: Worth the tram ride, if you ever find yourself in outer-southwest Sydney.