|
|
|
New South Wales (Sydney Region) |
| Glebe | |
| Glebe, right by Australia's oldest university, and only a fifteen-minute walk up Broadway from Central Station, has gradually been evolving from a café-oriented student quarter to more upmarket thirtysomething territory with a New Age slant. Indeed, it's very much the centre of alternative culture in Sydney, with its yoga schools and healing centres offering every kind of therapy, from Chinese massage to homeopathy and float tanks. Saturday is much the best time to come to get a taste of the area, when Glebe Market is in full swing. | |
| Glebe
Point Road, the focal point of the area, is filled with an eclectic
mix of cafés with trademark leafy courtyards, restaurants, bookshops
(check out Gleebooks at no. 49 & no. 191) and secondhand and
speciality shops as it runs uphill from Broadway, becoming quietly
residential as it slopes down towards the water of Rozelle Bay.
The side streets are fringed with renovated two-storey terraced houses with white iron-lacework verandahs. Its laid-back villagey feel makes it very popular with travellers: there is a good YHA hostel among others, an Internet café and even a backpackers' travel centre, and the handy, brand-new Broadway Shopping Centre linked by an overhead walkway from Glebe Point Road. However, with its twelve-screen movie theatre, it has already impacted on a big slice of Glebe culture. Jubilee Park and Blackwattle Studios |
|
| A
few blocks beyond St Johns Road, the action stops and Glebe Point Road
trails off into a more residential area, petering out at Jubilee Park
with characterful views across the water to boats and Rozelle Bay's
container terminal. The pleasantly landscaped waterfront park, complete
with huge shady Moreton Bay fig trees and a children's playground, offers
an unusual view of far-off Sydney Harbour Bridge framed within Sydney's
newest span, the fanciful Glebe Island Bridge.
Across from the park at 465 Glebe Point Rd, it's worth popping into the Blackwattle Studios (Mon-Fri 8am-4pm, Sun 9am-4pm). Artists have been operating for over twenty years from this industrial waterside building, formerly a wool warehouse, a lumber- and then a boat-yard. Under the rough and ready corrugated iron roof, artists, designers, craftspeople, architects and a film production company have their studios. Some have windows displaying work, while others splurge on a showroom, and after a look you can enjoy the food, coffee and views -across to the Glebe Island Bridge and the boats opposite - at the insouciant café, the Blackwattle Canteen. Sydney University |
|
| Just before the beginning of Glebe Point Road, on Broadway, the recently relandscaped Victoria Park has a very pleasant outdoor heated swimming pool complete with a café. Next door to the park, as Broadway turns into Parramatta Road, is one of the main gates to Sydney University. The university has 35,000 students and its extensive grounds take up a suburb-sized area between Parramatta Road, and City Road running up to King Street, Newtown. Australia's oldest tertiary educational institution, it was inaugurated in 1850; the Main Building, built of stone and complete with gargoyles and a quadrangle, conjures up the architecture of Oxford or Cambridge, especially in its cedar-ceilinged, stained-glass-windowed Great Hall which makes a glorious concert venue. Two museums, of antiquities and of natural history, plus an art gallery, can be visited (tel 9351 2222 for details; free). Famous alumni include Germaine Greer, Clive James, Jane Campion and the current prime minister John Howard. | |
|
|