Continuing on from last week's light-rail inspired adventures, here's me stamping around in the Eastern Suburbs' own

Randwick

Starting from UNSW's Kensington Campus, exiting east lands you in Randwick. The casual visitor is immediately greeted with NSW Health-related cranes and construction. The Prince of Wales Hospital is here, and I can only imagine that the Randwick Campus Redevelopment is an extension of that.

Not trying to suspiciously hang around a hospital during a pandemic, I continued past,

passing a kennel,

and some nifty gas tanks,

to reach some more development, this one residential.

There's a trend I don't mind when it comes to these new apartment blocks that are popping up everywhere, where they're placing a handful of cafes and some parkland at the base of the building.

For the residents, it provides an alternative to the increasingly out-of-reach Aussie backyard, and for suburban explorers, it provides a decent photo or two.

Taking off my urban planner hat, I left the flats, passing this glassy behemoth of a research institute,

and heading up the road, deeper into Randwick.

Here, I found more new apartments,

and some older ones too,

before the suburb lost some of its density, turning into a place housing some rather pretty older homes.

Bonus Ernie and Bert house.

The road with these houses turned out to be Perouse Road, a street leading directly into Randwick's commercial centre.

Randwick Town Centre's laid out slightly oddly.

On this end that I started in, you've got trendy restaurants and cafes, and some interesting older architecture, including the art deco Randwick Ritz.

And then, to get to the other side, you seemingly head back into suburbia,

past the local pub and across some pedestrian unfriendly streets,

head through this park,

past the hospital,

the Randwick light rail terminus,

and these impressive houses,

to reach the continuation of the town centre.

Here, you are faced with a fork in the road. Head left at Captain Cook for shopping, head right for further exploration.

I went right.

This took me past a church having reconstructive surgery,

and the tile shop that time forgot.

People live in the area too.

This route followed the previously identified trend of fancy buildings,

as well as the commercial area disappearing and reappearing.

Eventually, I hit the reason that I came this way in the first place, finding the very impressive Randwick City Council building.

They've even got a British style post box outside.

To head back to the "left fork" side of the commercial centre from before, I left the main road, crossing this remarkably flat park,

and some more interesting dwellings and other buildings.

Made it.

Although this turned out to be the side of Randwick's commercial area that was a little bit more alive with activity, it also turned out to be the less interesting side. Yes, some of the shopfronts did have interesting facades, but for the most part, here you just have the standard shops you'll find in any suburb.