Beauty in the 'Burbs: 52 Suburbs and Newtown

I tacked on to Peter's field trip to Sydney's museum to see a fascinating exhibit exploring 52 of Sydney's 683 suburbs through photography. Blogger Louise Hawson has lived in Sydney for over 20 years, and yet felt as if she knew nothing about other suburbs. What goes on in Penrith during the day? What is the neighborhood feel in Woolloomooloo? She spent one week, one for every week of the year, photographing a suburb, its people, its restaurants, its beaches, its houses. She kept a blog of her adventures 52 Suburbs * and using her photographs, created a series of diptychs, or juxtaposition of two or more photographs.

For example:

See the resemblance?

She does this with designs, patterns, people, funny signs matching with funny pictures.

It was a brilliant exhibit for the wandering student who knows very little about Sydney outside the city limits. Each suburb makes up a small part of the city-- there's no actual "Sydney" in a postal code form, but rather various neighborhoods that make up the city. Check out the blog to see more photographs, or my Picasa album for more. There are some really great photos and some interesting diptychs. Check it out!
Long story short, one of the pictures was of perfectly hand-rolled dumplings -- Julian and I made a beeline for Chinatown to get some soup dumplings. YUM!

Love this one in Manly:

Part Deux of Peter's tour was the following day in Newtown, the seedy/hipster/starting-to-be-gentrified part of Sydney. This suburb is the Soho/Jamaica Plain of Sydney. King Street runs straight down the middle with heaps and heaps of restaurants, shops, vintage clothing stores, seedy pubs and hotels mixed in with sleek wine bars. It is simply... the place to be. Back in the 1880s, Newtown was very working-class, which explains the numerous pubs and hotels (not your typical hotel remember, the English term "hotel," or pub.) When education became free for all back in the 1970s (date?), the demographics changed drastically as students and people of all backgrounds started moving into the Newtown, renting cheap apartments due to its proximity to the University of Sydney. In the 1970s and 80s, Newtown was the scene of all that was punk, rock, death metal and just pure awesomeness.
Things change once again as that generation grows up but remains in Newtown: people start having families and wanting nicer restaurants and wine bars. Townhouses that were worth $90,000 ten years ago are now worth close to $1 million AUD. Pretty crazy, huh ?
Peter was explaining that you'd be hard to find a glass of wine anywhere in Newtown ten years ago, but in such a relative short period of time, some of the best wine in the city you can find at local places such as Bloodwood.
Some of the best vintage shopping I've ever seen is here as well-- some people are dressed like it's still 1956--except they've added tattoos and piercings to boot. And with Newtown's hipster and punk beginnings comes the great debate of graffiti vs. street art. Houses, buildings, even entire alleyways are covered in graffiti, tagging and murals. Tina & Brad, you would simply LOVE this! ;)
We took a stroll down Memory... I mean, May Lane to check out some of the work. It was so cool!

Would you like this on your garage door? I would!
("Forget about the garage!")




This is by the Newtown train station. Neat-o!

And finally, this famous mural was painted in 1991 in one entire day. And how did the guy get away with it, you ask, despite graffiti being highly illegal in this city? He made a fake letterhead from the City Council, saying he was on some project to paint a mural. And the police bought it!

I cut out part of MLK's face oops-- you get the idea though.
I also like that this girl matched the background. I didn't put her there on purpose, I swear!
Trivia question: What flag is represented on this mural?

*Photos courtesy of 52 Suburbs by Louise Hawson