Cartoon Gabrielle: Toongabbie

Let's spend some more time working with my bread and butter - Western Sydney suburbs that nobody cares too much about.

Toongabbie

This unusually named suburb borders my previous stops Girraween and Pendle Hill. This means I got in on foot, landing in a completely anonymous patch of suburbia.

Time to get started. 

My start into Toongabbie really took me through not much of interest. Old, modest houses, 

straight roads, 

and signs of development afoot. 

This is a pretty common theme with many suburbs, especially in Western Sydney, where the sight of a small house on large land is usurped by new apartment blocks. 

This motif continued. Residential suburbia, 

with maybe some scaffolding here and there, 

making up a perfectly fine but unglamourous streetscape. 

I soon neared the town centre, with the houses making way for a smattering of commercial lots such as a dentist and an Indian textile shop,

and an Indian restaurant,

along with people who live above their local doctor's office. 

Toongabbie's commercial core runs along the west of the train line,

and unlike the dynamic Pendle Hill next door, things here weren't quite as exciting today. 

The shops lead into a small central park, 

as well as more shops, many of them closed despite it being Saturday afternoon. 

At least you can get the latest Desi cuts here. 

Rather than head to the station right away in order to cross into the other side of the suburb, I opted to give the CBD another chance, 

and took the main street in.

Toongabbie's commercial core wasn't my favourite. It boasts a decent collection of stores and restaurants - with a good South Asian showing, 

but it just seemed to be missing any sort of spark which might inspire an out-of-suburber to come visit. 

There are many Western Sydney suburbs which inspire me to walk around their commercial district and look around all day. Toongabbie unfortunately is not one of them. 

A little bit underwhelmed so far, I crossed the station to see what Eastern Toongabbie has to offer. 

Upon arriving on the other side, I started walking, once again through residential Toongabbie, to see what I could see. 

Just like the other side, here we've got more older and modest houses, 

on straight and flat roads, 

with newer housing scattered throughout. 

I continued on, passing a very overgrown creek.

Toongabbie actually has a number of creeks running through it and meeting at the suburb's northern edge. I wouldn't have mentioned this, except that Wikipedia tells me that the suburb's name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning meeting of the waters, which I thought was kind of neat. 

From here, I headed east through Toongabbie towards my next suburb. On my way I found plenty more Western Sydney suburbia, featuring my first denim-coloured house, 

some well-maintained single storey houses,

a highly questionable council cleanup,

more stock-standard older homes,

and really large new houses using every last cm of land available to them, 

plus just about everything in between. 

This diversity of Toongabbie's suburbia helped warm me to the suburb after the uninspiring commercial centre, 

and after a couple more streets, 

with a continued variety of houses along the way,

I eventually reached the suburb's eastern border, which I crossed to enter my next suburb.

Toongabbie: A below expectations commercial core, with some above expectations residential surrounds.