Welcome to the final suburb of the year!

Redfern

Redfern's an Inner City suburb immediately south of the city. Having just finished my final day of work for the year (yahoo), I met Mrs Completing Sydney at Redfern Station for some late-afternoon suburbsing.As station exits go, Redfern's pretty good, with murals and city views,

not to mention someone driving one of those sweet rice bubble cars. I miss those cars.

Most of Redfern sits to the east of the station, but I chose to start off by poking my head to the west, through a construction zone,

(obligatory "Bill Posters is an innocent man!")

and to the other side.

The streets around here are known as "The Block", and are most famous for the significant amount of housing here owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company. Interestingly, although Redfern is most famous for its Aboriginal population, these days Aboriginal residents of Redfern make up only 2.1% of the population - less than the national average.

There's also a community open space here,

featuring a 3D Welcome to Redfern sign on this unidentified brick building.

Controversially, The Block is now the site of a large development of apartment towers. I'm not educated enough on the development itself or the socioeconomics of the matter to really comment, but it's a change to what we normally think of when we think of this place.

Heading back, we started on eastern Redfern.

This is the start of Redfern's commercial core and, even in a pandemic, there was plenty of foot and car traffic from the after work crowd.

Redfern's High Street is the appropriately named Redfern Street, and that's where we headed.

Redfern Street is quite an interesting thoroughfare, with shops as expected,

buildings with decorative facades,

and a mural or two.

There's also a fair chunk of interesting old buildings, such as the old post office,

these ones that I'm too lazy to look up,

and the old court house which is now a Covid testing centre.

I actually got tested here a few months ago. It was a bizarre experience siting in a beautiful old court room while everyone around you is wearing full PPE. Very apocalyptic.

But back to Redfern Street - even the local dentists hang out in an old cottage.

But my personal Redfern Street highlight? Tony Abbott marrying Tony Abbott. It's a classic.

Continuing east up the road, the hipstery main strip started to subside, being replaced by the slightly more classic,

as well as terraced residential.

We took a turn off Redfern Street to head to the reason I'm writing up Redfern in the first place,

burgers.

And not just any burgers. This place calls itself Suburgia, and names its burgers after Sydney suburbs. As the "Sydney suburbs guy", as well as a lover of burgers, this seemed right up my alley.

I went the Fairfield. Bizarrely, the Fairfield wasn't a falafel patty, but instead contains your standard burger salads, burger sauce, bacon, liquid cheese and of course a beef patty. Very tasty, although I almost immediately got liquid cheese all over my white shirt so that was fun.

The missus got the Drummoyne, which was even tastier (I took a bite for "market research"). A bacon barbeque cheeseburger, this is the one I'd go for if I came back. You can probably tell from the pictures, but the chips were pretty damn good too.

Full of a non-kosher meal, we headed off, past this punny bakery,

and into Redfern Park.

Redfern Park is geographically right in the centre of the suburb and features walking paths,

monuments,

the fine arts,

a heritage-listed sports field,

and these dogs having a business lunch.

Passing through the park,

to the other side,

started us on residential Redfern.

Past some newer apartments.

some public housing towers,

and this broken down car,

We continued on, soon finding outselves in the more "terracey" bits of Redfern.

This is where people have soft looking foliage on their houses,

blue doors,

fancy frontages,

and even people trying to be artistic with reclaimed scrap metal into a probably-very-fancy-inside house.

Interesting alleyways too.

It is these sorts of streets that you often see when exploring the inner suburbs.

Special callout goes to this house who threw out nothing but the kitchen sink.

Eventually, we hit a small commercial area,

with this pretty little bottle shop,

and a walkway,

past a couple more shops,

and to a local reserve, Edmund Resch Reserve (which is also labelled Moore Park Mews Dog Park on the map).

This is a pleasant little park which feels like it's the courtyard of the neighbouring apartments.

If you don't have a dog, you can always have a seat on the park bench and watch other people's dogs scamp,

that's what Lewis here appeared to be doing anyway.

If you continue down the walkway you actually leave Redfern and cross into Moore Park (don't do that, it's a different suburb.)

Instead, we backtracked,

towards my final Redfern point-of-interest.

To get there was a short walk through more residential Redfern,

a cycling super-expressway,

a puppy super-expressway,

and monuments to the Greek Gods.

Finally, one sidestreet remained,

to reach where NSW Policehorses live.

Google Maps says that this is a museum, but it all looked pretty official and policey so I didn't stick my head through the fence lest I got put in hoof-cuffs.