The Finer Things: South Hurstville

This is the next installment of a suprisingly large number of suburbs where I drag Mrs Completing Sydney out of bed to eat carbs at some place I read about online.

South Hurstville

South Hurstville is, as you may expect, south of Hurstville. We headed in the most logical way, which was to catch a train to Hurstville and start walking south until this sign appered.

Interestingly, the "welcome to" sign says South Hurstville on both sides of it, so clearly the folks at the Georges River council are trying to confuse everybody. Here's a far too zoomed out picture as evidence.

The way I chose to enter the suburb is less than glamourous, with the wide and busy King Georges Road offering up plenty of traffic,

and wonderous sights such as a 7/11,

and McDonalds. 

After not too long, the road splits and we were led onto a smaller road running parallel to His Royal Majesty George,

with some new apartments,

showcasing that world class "new Sydney apartment build quality". 

We continued on past a closed Christmas store, 

to reach what you could probably call South Hurstville CBD. 

Unlike its dynamic, Asian influenced northern neighbour, South Hurstville CBD is essentially a busy intersection with a pub,

and a reasonable but small strip of shops. 

Bonus bench. 

The reason I dragged us to South Hurstville today was for breakfast at this place - Oregano Bakery. 

Despite the name, this place isn't most famous for Middle Eastern manaeesh/manakish/manaqish depending on how you choose to romanise your Arabic, but specialises in cinnamon buns.

Aw yes.

Today was a classic iced cinnamon (lovely),

a "mocha" topped one (not as good as the original),

and a couple coffees.

Oh, and I couldn't not get some manaeesh too (tasty, but not as good as dad's due to the slightly-stingy zaatar use). 

A good (heavy) time, all-in-all. 

Also worth calling out was the interesting view across the road - kindly pointed out by Mrs Completing Sydney while I stuffed my face. 

With that done, we waddled on,

past the handful of restaurants which weren't open yet, 

and into residential South Hurstville.

Suburban South Hurstville actually turned out to be a fairly interesting place to stroll through, with plenty of variety,

some apocalypse-ready vehicles,

and, on the handful of streets which were filled with near-identical 20th century brick apartments, well-treed streets. 

That being said, even some of the older units had a few tricks up their sleeves. This one is curly and Southern-European feeling,

this one remarkably featureless,

and this one has one hell of a mailbox. 

We continued on through more suburban variety, 

with bonus festive elephants,

to reach a local park. 

This small park has things you may expect, such as trees, benches and exercise equipment, 

but also includes a giant shrine to Chinese poet Li Bai.

That's one fine juxtaposition they've got going here. 

Interestingly, it turns out that this park is called Ma'anshan Friendship Park, in honour of the sister-city relationship between the Chinese city of Ma'anshan, and Kogarah City Council, a council which no longer exists. I wonder if that's why the relationship with Australia and China has soured in recent times. 

With my astute political analysis out of the way, I was now at liberty to call it for South Hurstville, and returned back north to head out. 

On the way, I passed some fine twentieth century brick,

some more apocalypse-ready vehicles (in front of an actually pretty cool house),

and just a general hodgepodge of housing options. 

Special mention goes to the saddest planter I've ever seen,

these very cool white brick homes,

and turf which has been planted a good 15cm above the ground. 

That's more or less it for South Hurstville.

What a place. 

South Hurstville: I dig it.