Gradual: Burwood Heights and Croydon Park

These next two suburbs have a surprisingly interesting aspect to them. While sitting within the Inner West's bounds, they offer hints as to where the Inner West end and Western and Southwest Sydney starts. 

Burwood Heights

Burwood is actually a pretty cool suburb. So cool that it took out the much coveted Platinum Ibis in 2019. As such, I had high expectations of its taller cousin, which starts on the busy Hume Highway. 

One of the things that I initially liked about Burwood itself was the huge amount of fancy old federation houses in the suburb's residential south. Burwood Heights, even on the main road, seems to want to continue this trend, with one of the fancier old houses I've seen in my time. 

Check out those hedges. 

To explore the actual suburb, I left the main road and headed into this small suburb's residential core. 

First impressions? Well these brick parking spots carved out of the nature strip are pretty nifty,

and you can just tell that the path into this house is extremely slippery in the wet. 

But really, Burwood Heights seems to only boast an above average amount of fancy old houses, without going too far. 

The streets themselves are otherwise fairly stock standard central-Sydney suburbia,

with a little hint of Western Sydney the deeper you go. 

Burwood Heights is almost entirely residential, but I did bump into these three sisters looking cute (a hairdresser, a builder and a florist). 

The florist has these birds. I like them.

From these local services, I was right at the border of the next suburb.

Burwood Heights: It's not Burwood but it's doing its best. 

Crossing the border from Burwood Heights took me into

Croydon Park

Just like Burwood Heights, Croydon Park is a suburb with a more famous Inner West sibling (seen in my previous post). 

Here, the shift in vibe from Inner West to West continues, 

with more plain and unassuming houses, 

these ones with more of a "post-war-migration" vibe. 

My walk through this suburban pocket was fairly unnotable, 

and I soon reached the suburb's commercial centre. 

Croydon Park CBD is marked by a strip of shops along the Georges River Road,

such as these colourful options, 

this Middle Eastern sweet shop (which is apparently really good according to Google reviews - and now I'm hungry),

a Filipino Restaurant which smelled great (and Google reviews also tells me is very good),  

and the local watering hole, 

to name a few. 

But the path to my next suburb was off the main road, so I said goodbye to the shops, 

and headed deeper into Croydon Park suburbia. 

Here, the fancy old houses had finally disappeared, 

and after not too long, 

the palm trees suggested that I was in the suburbs of Los Angeles. 

From LA, it wasn't too far a journey,

through some more okay-suburbia,

to reach my next suburb.

Croydon Park: The Joey Travolta to Croydon's John Travolta.