In West
West Pymble
West Pymble is a suburb which is, for some reason, south of the Upper North Shore suburb Pymble. From Pymble itself, a Sydney bus did the honours of taking me into the suburb, leaving me on a wide and busy road known as Ryde Road.
The suburb starts at the confusingly named Gordon West Public School (although I suppose that Gordon West would be a more geographically accurate name for this suburb).
From here, I turned off of the main road to start to explore the thickly-treed suburban streets.
The first house on the street hinted at more fancy houses à la real Pymble,
but it soon became clear to me that West Pymble is a little more down to earth, with regular suburban homes more of the norm.
As I continued along, West Pymble did not try to hide the fact that it sits on the fringes of Lane Cove National Park. This spot looks more like a campsite than the local neighbourhood park that it is.
Indeed, the pathways through the park are also a lot more bushwalk than they are suburban footpaths.
Somehow, this pathway left me at a higher elevation to the rest of the folks in the suburb, and I could only look on through a safety fence as families enjoyed the outdoors. This particular park is yet another Bicentennial Park. People, we've been over this. Bicentennial Park is in Sydney Olympic Park. While this park (and the supposed Bicentennial in Annandale too) are very nice parks, come up with a not-taken name please.
One nice thing I do have to say about West Pymble is that it is (or was on my visit anyway) full of folks enjoying the outdoors. Between people practicing their cricket, playing weekend footy, or just going for a stroll, West Pymble seems to be in the minority of suburbs where locals are out actually enjoying where they live. That's got to count for something.
Leaving the parks, I took a short walk to take a peek at the local shopping centre, Philip Mall.
This is the kind of minor, mildly-charming outdoor shopping mall that you normally get in regional towns. Well West Pymble's got one too. Staples include an IGA (because nobody's first choice is ever an IGA, let's be real)
and a Chinese restaurant called <town name> Chinese Restaurant (written in that generic Kung-Fu font, of course).
I left the shops to continue through the residential streets.
The deeper I got into the suburb, the clearer it got that West Pymble was merging into the bush, with homes on weird elevations overrun with trees becoming the norm.
Before long, I chose to stop beating around the proverbial and took a suburban pathway downhill,
to head into Lane Cove National Park.
If you haven't come across it before, Lane Cove National Park is a national park running through a significant portion of northern Sydney. Running along the Lane Cove River, it offers up plenty of bushwalking opportunities without having to leave the city.
As expected, this bushwalk took me a small portion of the thickly wooded national park, with a very easy trail to follow.
This bushwalk was the route I chose to take into my next suburb. As I began to approach the the end of West Pymble, this walk began offering up a few very pretty plants as I strolled on.
I also learned that my camera can struggle to focus on a nearby subject.
After not too long, I hit Lane Cove River itself, marking my crossing into the next suburb.
West Pymble: Been spending most our lives, living in a botanist's paradise.
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