Heritage Hunt: Hunters Hill

After a handful of rather tiny suburbs, it's time to move onto something a little more substantial, with a suburb you may have actually heard of.

Hunters Hill

There are many ways to get into Hunters Hill. I took one of the presumably less popular options, with a footbridge from Huntleys Cove taking me across Tarban Creek and into Hunters Hill. This landed me in some scruffy overgrowth by some Sydney Water infrastructure,

from where I was able to take a quiet path into the backside of suburban Hunters Hill.

From here, I was free to get started. My stroll took me through some fairly unexciting upper-middle class suburbia, 

with well-kept, tree-lined streets,

some of which turned out to be quite vertical. 

All perfectly pleasant, with nothing too special to report. 

As my walk took me further towards the town centre, Hunters Hill did start to offer up a little bit of sandstone to spice things up, with this bizarrely beautiful series of Catholic aged care centres. 

Not wanting to be the person to start the next nursing home Covid outbreak, I continued on, soon reaching Hunters Hill's main commercial centre. 

This was perfect as I was ready for lunch. 

As you may expect from such a place, Hunters Hill sports a stack of cafes, as well as other upper-middle class hallmarks such as gourmet butchers and independent stores.

Otherwise, the CBD is a perfectly acceptable mix of the local and quaint, and the new and shiny. The main road does put a bit of a damper on the village feel. 

For my lunch I chose to head a few doors down and check out the local Turkish joint, a place calling itself "Grill Republic". 

Looks the part. 

My meal today was a wrap with juicy pieces of lamb, garlic-yoghurt and hot chips all inside. Bloody tasty, and worth coming back to. 

With the obligatory food-blog portion of this post completed, I continued on. 

Now, Hunters Hill has a lot of coastline to its name. As such, rather than bee-line through the place, it seemed appropriate to take a more scenic route through the suburb. I headed north towards the suburb's northern banks,

through one long, straight, tree-lined road, 

to reach the Lane Cove River. 

Geographically, Hunters Hill is an interesting suburb, sandwiched between the Lane Cove River to its north, and Parramatta River to its south.

Also here is Fig Tree Bridge across the Lane Cove, joining Hunters Hill with more of the North Shore. 

From here, I chose to walk under the bridge and along the shore, enjoying the serenity of the river,

with a short detour required on a rather pretty suburban street in order to hug the coast. 

Interestingly, it turns out that this route is actually part of the Great North Walk, an epic walk (or series of walks if you're not insane) from Sydney CBD all the way north to Newcastle. 

A path behind the local primary school,

allows the riverside walk to continue. 

One thing I always find remarkable about Sydney is how many seemingly unknown or unpopular spots like this exist. This is an anonymous pathway on a fairly anonymous river in an anonymous suburb, and yet it's absolutely tremendous. 

Sadly, this riverside walk turned out to be exceedingly short, leaving me to take a vertical street through more sandstone in order to get back into the rest of the suburb. 

I soon hit flat land and was able to continue my mission across Hunters Hill. This is where the suburb really started to get interesting.

From this point on, wherever I looked I saw interesting old houses and buildings.  

Sandstone is the norm, not the exception. From houses, 

to churches, 

to the local Town Hall. 

This is a suburb for "heritage-spotters".

I don't know of anywhere else in Sydney, other than maybe The Rocks, with such a consistent number of gorgeous old buildings. 

It's endless. 

I did keep moving through, taking a million photos along the way. 

Still apparently following the Great North Walk. 

Now nearing Hunters Hill's border with my next suburb, I took a short detour off the road I'd been following for more of the "pretty houses" portion of this suburb.  

This was to head down this cul-de-sac (Gladstone Ave),

with a tiny reserve sporting a gorgeous cliff-side view of Lane Cove River once more. 

An excellent spot to stop for some water (particularly after the garlicky lunch!) 

From here, it's just a short distance to cross into the next suburb. 

Hunters Hill: The "sleeper car" of beautiful suburbs.