Another walk from the City of Sydney – Gritty Newtown
Learnt a few things… again! Who’d have thought??
Did not know what this meant until now!
This art-deco building on King St was an icerink that transformed into summer baths!
Simply gorgeous terraces overlooking Hollis Park
The old Trocadero on King St – roller skating and dancing.
Newtown’s most sought-after address apparently
Hollis Park – beautiful
This weekend we followed a tour from https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au called Skirting Sydney.
It focused on The Rocks and around Martin Place. This tour pinpoints key sites where girls and women lived and worked, where they were educated and entertained, and where pioneering activist women held meetings, published journals and sometimes in the process expanded the possibilities for all women’s lives.
Good stuff.
Another City of Sydney walking tour through a history of Commercial & Retail Sydney
Down Martin Place where the Commonwealth Bank and original MLC building are, through the Grace Hotel which was requisitioned by General MacArthur in WWII, past the AWA Tower – “Sydney’s Eiffel Tower”, the beautiful Dymocks Building, State Theatre, Arthouse Hotel, Tattersall’s Building and more.
Another City of Sydney walk History Walk – Customs House to Millers Point
We went, for the first time, to Observatory Hill Park and went through the observatory. Was great. And free! Site of Sydney’s first windmill with beautiful views of Sydney to the east and west. We discovered Ferry Lane and The Paddock, had a drink at the Lord Nelson, found a still in use cast iron urinal and discovered the laneway below Lower Fort St.
We did a walk that City of Sydney council put together, one that takes you down old hidden laneways.
While nothing like Melbourne’s fabulous laneways, there’s still plenty of interest in Sydney.
Bulletin Place, where the Basement venue is, Reiby Place (as in Mary), Palings (music) Place, Angel Place, the Tank Stream.
Lots to see and learn.
Neither of us had ever wandered around Naremburn before.
What a pretty suburb, and plenty of history to explore as well. I wonder if current residents know that it used to be known as both Dog Town and Pension Town!
We learnt that Henry Lawson lived here for a while as well as some other bits and pieces.
http://edocs.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/DocumentViewer.ashx?dsi=4787009
| Looking across the gully to Walter Burley Griffin’s Incinerator |  |
| How many times have I driven across this 1886 bridge at the bottom of Willoughby Road without knowing the history behind it? |  |
This weekend we walked the Tom Uren Walking Trail at Balmain.
I knew of Tom Uren’s green bans, activism, interest in heritage and the environment and the like but I wasn’t aware he was a sportsman (professional boxer, swimmer, rugby league player for Manly) or a soldier or prisoner-of-war.
He grew up in Balmain and so Leichhardt Council has designed a nice stroll around the area.
