Night Light: Beaconsfield and Rosebery

Here's a two-for-one post where I show you why I almost never do suburbs at night.

Beaconsfield

I often find that Southeast Sydney is a bit of a forgotten region. Perhaps the best example of this is Beaconsfield, a small and entirely unknown suburb which is only 4km south of Central. After a few wrong turns on the way here, I was already out of sunlight when I arrived, crossing the major Botany Road to enter the suburb's bounds.

At least the lack of light allowed Yummy Duck BBQ and Nemo to illuminate. 

Instead of looking at low-rent shopfronts on the main road, I headed into the suburb proper to see what residential Beaconsfield has to offer. 

Not too much apparently. 

Being not far from the city, a lot of the homes here are adorable, skinny terraces.

Unfortunately, Beaconsfield has a problem that a lot of inner suburbs face. Well it's not really a problem, but it makes my life difficult. The problem is that it has cute houses on narrow and tree-lined streets, making it near impossible to get a good shot of the houses. 

Continuing on, 

I passed these less cute options. 

Before reaching this fairly unnotable little park,

with cafe-spec tables.

This marked the end of this small suburb.

Beaconsfield: Entrée 

Rosebery

After the nosebleedingly exciting Beaconsfield, I crossed Botany Road again to enter the more substantial Rosebery.

Here you can visit this bizarre shop where they do... things. Isn't cryo where they freeze you so that you can be thawed out in the year 3000 (or at least after Covid)?

They are having a sale at the moment though.

Anyway, I continued into the actual suburb.

This stop was this place called The Cannery.

The Cannery, per its name, is a former soup canning warehouse. These days it has food restaurants and stores, as well as this car. It's a little bit more happening during the day, I'm told.

Back out on the street, 

I followed a beaconsfield of light,

to reach the Messina HQ and factory.

I didn't feel like queueing up to buy ice cream in a cramped place during a pandemic (even though Messina is pretty damn good), so I continued on.

This led me to the local park.

This is actually quite a nice park, with gym equipment, somewhere to kick a ball around, and a couple of tennis courts. 

But who wants to stroll around a soccer oval at night?

This led me further into suburban Rosebery where I proceeded to take some truly woeful pictures of dark suburbia.

Quality.

Nearby these houses, the map told me that there was a Macedonian Orthodox Church, so I headed that way.

I like it when in otherwise very ordinary suburbia you find an unusual church or temple. This particular example wasn't too mindblowing, but it still makes for some nice decoration over the usual "look, a house". 

On I went, looking at early twentieth century houses,

and stretching the limits of my sub-$300 Chinese cameraphone. 

Special mention goes to this house with some really pointy trees.

Reach a certain point, and the older, low density Rosebery ends, being replaced with high density, inner-city living. It starts off fairly modest,

but soon you're surrounded with large and new apartment blocks.

I was actually here today to visit a friend who lives in one of the new Rosebery apartments, which is why I was suburbsing at a weird hour today. 

Because it's rude to go to someone's house empty handed, and because I'm not really a wine drinker, my version of carrying a bottle of wine to someone's house is to buy some whale-themed bubble tea for myself and the host. 

This place is bloody adorable.

Bubble tea in hand, it was only a short walk from here to my friend's place,

where the delicious, sweet whale-themed tea was able to be consumed. (Seriously though, if you like bubble tea, 52Hz Whale made an excellent one). 

Decent view from their balcony too.

Rosebery: Doesn't matter, had tea.