Spend enough time mindlessly wandering around Southeast Sydney and you just may find yourself in
Matraville
As is usual, to enter Matraville I just crossed this road from my previous suburb of Chifley.
Less usual, this dropped me into a cemetery.
And quite a large cemetery at that. It always feels a bit strange blogging through a graveyard so I didn't wait around too much,
heading on through the east's answer to Rookwood.
On the way though, I did stop for this little memorial garden and creek.
Before eventually finishing the kilometre through to the other side.
After that somewhat grim start to the suburb, I followed the road southeast for a brief detour into Port Botany (covered in my previous post),
before emerging out the other side after looking at some shipping containers.
I was now at liberty to actually cover Matraville. The main artery through this southern bit of Matraville is Military Road,
a road which kept asking me to look at more graves, 
before changing its mind and going industrial.
This meant I got to look at such exciting things as... dnata, onata?
As well as trucks parking,
and the people who left Tom Hanks stranded on an island for years.
Without much else to say, I continued along,
eventually reaching another main road.
This one boasts an unexpected city skyline glimpse,
as well as the poorly zoomed in La Perouse Pony Club.
From here, I had to push on through the main road as the map told me that that side streets don't really lead anywhere.
Case in point.
But that's okay, as soon a bit of residential Matraville begins here anyway.
It starts with some red brick walkups,
and leads to some modest single houses,
as well as a mason who appears to specialise in grave stones. Know your local market I suppose.
Here's a bonus substation. It's just about the plainest substation ever, but it's a bonus so don't complain.
Continuing on,
initially was more of the same,
but soon, the landscape changed,
and I entered Matraville's commercial district. Owing to the wide and busy main road running through the place, Matraville CBD is not my favourite place for a saunter.
As a result, I didn't find myself enticed to stop for the numerous closed cafes and daytime eateries (it was coming on late afternoon now),
or even a convenience store of the British Isles.
I didn't stop for the corner pub,
nor for the local vets that know your pets.
I didn't even stop for this electronics store straight out of 1997. I wonder if they sell those VHS tapes you used to be able to buy which would somehow clean your VCR? (Incidentally, were those just a scam?)
And no, I didn't even stop for a Portuguese chicken burger at this place which has excellent online reviews (although as I type this blog post up I could do for one right now).
You may be sad to hear that I didn't stop anywhere, and instead continued into my next suburb.
Matraville: Not the most gripping, but I may have to return for one of those burgers.
A curious suburb. Amazing it hasn't been discovered and overwhelmed by developers. Those cleaning tapes were poor substitutes for opening the machine up and cleaning the heads and rollers yourself. But also, in the same realm of the antiquated, there was a little machine you could buy separately to clean the tapes. I would be willing to bet that shop had both. Or perhaps the staff would offer to do the cleaning for you. A lost opportunity to check! Perhaps when you go back for the burgers.
ReplyDeleteI'm honoured to have a reply by a person so learned in cassette cleaning technology
DeleteI grew up here. Pretty accurate. But I think perhaps for lack of time you focussed a bit too much on the industrial end of the suburb - the eastern side where most ppl live are more suburbia typical of average Sydney. But the industrial end does probably cement that part of Matraville as the “arser” end of the arse end of the eastern suburbs 🤣.
ReplyDelete