Have the classic sightseeing Western Sydney suburbs like Cabramatta or Harris Park gotten a bit too mainstream for your liking? Well grab your Opal Card, because here's a new adventure.

Pendle Hill

Pendle Hill is a Western Sydney suburb sitting vaguely between the hubs of Parramatta and Blacktown. Despite the clouds and light drizzle, the trains were running and so I grabbed a train down the Western Line to get in from Central in roughly 40 minutes.

Pendle Hill station is a completely standard suburban station without much of interest, but the Pendle Hill CBD just next to the tracks appeared to be a little more interesting.

So what did I find when stepping into this suburb for the first time?

(Apart from an impressive cafe (and impressive tailor (and presumably impressive costume hire))).

Well the local flavour here is South Asian, largely owing to the large population of Pendle Hill originally from India or Sri Lanka.

This means saree shops,

goldmongers,

grocers,

and just about anything else with a subcontinental theme can be found here.

This, of course, also means food. Some don't seem too out of the ordinary,

this one had the exterior of a sex shop,

but I was most intrigued by Sydney Marina, a restaurant with the exterior appearance of a fish shop,

with some trimmings, of course.

Inside is a casual restaurant serving up many things I could not identify, as well as a large selection of curries. Having started my day fairly late today, I was already ready for lunch. I wasn't feeling like tucking into a curry as I had a few suburbs on my agenda today (although everyone else here was doing just that) and didn't want to fall asleep, so I figured I'd pick up a few "snacks", which is what Sydney Marina calls their section of various fried doughs with fillings at the front of the store.

I had four delicious things:

one of these (with delicious peppery chicken inside),

another one of these (this one with equally delicious vegetables - although looking at the pictures, I can't actually remember which one was chicken and which was veg),

a samosa (also delicious)

and finally, this wonderfully crunchy thing called a pakora (a battered vegetable fritter).

I very much enjoyed my Indian equivalent of a meat pie and sausage roll for lunch. At the risk of starting a war, this version is far superior to its Australian counterpart.

To wash it all down, I headed into the small grocery store pictured earlier in the post to try a soft drink I'd never seen before. This is a Necto, made by the good people at Elephant House.

The back of the can didn't say what percentage of the drink was made of real elephants, but I did learn that this very sweet bubblegummy tasting carbonated beverage is actually raspberry flavour. It's sugar so I'm biologically programmed to say that it tasted good.

Fueled by carbs and carbs, I headed away from Pendle Hill's commercial core to explore a couple of its side streets.

This revealed some pretty typical Western Sydney suburbia, with a mixture of homes under construction,

modest existing homes,

and just up the street,

some new apartments too,

across the road from their more traditional cousins.

This way led me across a footbridge into a park named Civic Park.

Civic Park is your standard pleasant suburban patch of grass.

Features include this monument,

places to sit, picnic or BBQ,

with kids playground,

a really straight path,

a tennis court and cricket pitch (although there was a sign saying not to play with hard balls here, meaning your cricket is limited to the tennis ball variety),