Alpine Chalet: Mount Druitt

It's a longstanding Sydney tradition that when a tourist asks where to go in this fine town, you recommend that they scale Mount Druitt (or at least Rooty Hill). As such, it's only fair that we give the suburb a chance to be something more. 

Mount Druitt

After a long half-day scaling a stack of residential suburbs to Mount Druitt's north (11 to be precise), Mrs Completing Sydney and I had worked up an appetite, so we made our way over to the shops to the south of the station. 

The bigger shopping district is north of the station with Mount Druitt Westfield, and as a result, the shops here are perhaps a little shabbier than an aspiring mountaineer may hope, with a few grocers and assorted services, and a fair share of closed shutters. 

Other points of interest, however, include this mural, 

a baby's lost sock,

a very big pawn shop, 

with a cool 365% interest rate on loans,

and this burger joint. 

Mate Burger is a Filipino burger shop. I've never actually had Filipino food (and a burger shop probably isn't going to be serving anything actually Filipino), but this seemed like as good a spot as any for a Mount Druittian lunch. 

Mrs Completing Sydney picked up an "FFC Rice Bowl" (Filipino Fried Chicken), 

I chose pretty much the same thing in burger form, 

and for a side (which turned out to be an entire meal by itself), we grabbed these chicken adobo fries. Everything was delicious - with the highlight being the super flavourful adobo chips.

It was also way too much food and we had leftovers for the next day's lunch. 

In other news, next door to the burger shop is an insanely good smelling brownie shop going by the name Tee-lish. Sadly, after that lunch brownies were not an option. Another time. 

From here, you can apparently take the Mount Druitt heritage walk. 

One such old thing was supposed to be nearby, 

so we headed down a side street, 

past this oddly painted apartment block, 

in order to take a poor quality photo of this old house. Heritagey. 

Other than that, I didn't come across much else in this bit of Mount Druitt, except a sweet shop & tobacconist, 

an Aboriginal health clinic, 

and the non-Druitt mountains in the horizon. 

Needing a bathroom break (the burger shop didn't appear to have one), we figured we'd pop into the commercial bit of the suburb north of the station. This bit seemed to be a land of apartments and carparks, 

and the almighty Mount Druitt Cashies. The place most people would go to on this side is the Westfield, but driving into a Westfield carpark is my personal torture, so I decided to give that one a miss. 

Instead, we headed for a quick stop in suburban Mount Druitt. 

This turned out to be some completely standard Western Sydney suburbia, with that all-too-familiar mix of older, smaller brick houses,

newer, bigger ones, wide streets, 

and this single blue house. 

The main thing I was curious to check out up here was the RAAF Memorial Park. 

A lot of the time, this would just be a regular old reserve with some paths, benches and maybe a playground, 

but this park actually has a little bit more. 

There's this little fenced-off memorial-y bit to the air force, 

with a plaque, 

and this pleasing mosaic. 

Taking a walk outside of the gated monument (past the obligatory shopping trolley), 

revealed another interesting monument in the park. 

This intersting piece is a monument to the peaceful relationship between Australia and South Korea, and a monument to the Pacific War. 

If grandiose monuments aren't to your style, you can instead enjoy this chain ladder you can climb for exercise, 

or these things which I assume are also for exercise. 

And if that still doesn't interest you, 

RAAF Park also has a wooded bit, presumably for a brief bushwalk. 

Satisfied I'd conquered enough of this fierce mountain, I decided to call it a day, 

but not before gazing at this bizarely painted building by the powerlines.  

Mount Druitt: Kosciuszko - 2228m. Kilimanjaro - 5,895m. Everest - 8849m. Druitt - 58m.