Chaperone: Stanhope Gardens

Occasionally, I go into a suburb with zero expectations of anything special, and am pleasantly surprised. Here's Western Sydney's 

Stanhope Gardens 

Today's post will be a little bit funny. I have a local-living friend who excitedly found out that Stanhope Gardens has a place which sells empanadas (i.e. Latin American samosas). She suggested I come out, and I decided to cover off the suburb while I was around. This meant that I had the pleasure of having a private driver take me around Stanhope Gardens today. Luxury.

Because I don't waste time, my Stanhopian adventure today starts at the local shopping centre. 

I normally skip shopping centres for this blog but I had two reasons for coming here:

1. 1. I was wearing old thongs with no grip on the bottom and it had been raining, converting my thongs into skates. A trip to Kmart and a $4 investment in some new thongs solved that problem.  

1. 2. The empanadas are here.

In the car park outside of the shops is a small half open room named Churro King. Yes, they do churros, but more importantly for our visit, they also do empanadas. 

We ordered some chicken ones and some cheese ones (they have a wider variety but sadly didn't have the other fillings ready), and waited by the Stanhope Gardens dog parking lot for our food.

Chicken: very tasty.

Cheese: very tasty.

The ooze is real.

With the lunch and footwear purchases complete, I now had an entire suburb to explore.

Across the road from the shops is the Blacktown Leisure Centre, a local hub for after school activities. 

They also have these neat pillars outside decorated with Aboriginal designs,

as well as a car park with an outrageous number of discarded shopping trolleys. It turns out that everybody in Stanhope Gardens parks here to go to the shops, and never bothers taking their trolley back after. 

Investigative journalism. 

More interesting than that is the lawn out front, with the Western Sydney classic collection of ibises and newly developed houses. 

Into the car for the next leg of the adventure.

We parked in front of this guy's house,

and took a walk down this pathway,

through some greenspace, 

to reach a patch of grass with some pretty decent highlights.

1. 1. Two excellent geese. 

(from all angles)

1. 2. A lake with water-feature (and more waterfowl)

1. 3. This (what do I call this, a gazebo?)

and then take a walk deeper through the patch of grass, 

past some bizarely orchard-like trees,

and you will reach,

1. 4. Whatever this is. 

We head back to the car for the next stop in the guided tour. 

This next one was actually a stop I picked. It's not this field which is the home of the Newbury Bulls Football Club (apparently),

it's this church across the road with some fine angles,

and a pleasing roundabout outside. 

This area also proved to be a good place for observing the sort of houses that Stanhopians live in. 

The answer is new, big ones. 

It was time to head to our final Stanhope Gardens point of interest, so I was driven to this street,

walked past this house with a very aggresive brick colour scheme, 

through some actually very lovely tree-lined streets, 

an even-more-lost trolley, 

and local park,

which is simply named Reserve 794,  

in order to reach another patch of grass at the suburb's edge. 

I was brought here to see these cows. I don't know why they're here, but I like them anyway.

They also have this spiffy Stanhope Gardens sign here. Not as exciting as the cows, but very few things are. 

And at that, we headed back to the car and skedaddled out of the suburb. 

Stanhope Gardens: Contains some of Sydney's most dynamic patches of grass.