Tube Man: Cherrybrook

Remember The Hills District? It's back. In Cherry form.

Cherrybrook

Sitting around 30km northwest of the city, Cherrybrook is a 40-50 minute train ride from Central, depending on which train you manage to catch before switching to the shiny new metro. Most of the Hills suburbs are far too large to properly explore on foot, so I was fortunate enough to come in by car today. Regardless, I chose to start my trip at the station.

While I do like the Sydney Metro, I find its placement bizarre, with its sleek modernness,

in what feels to be the middle of nowhere.

Are we the only city in the world which has built a metro in outer suburbia and then heavy rail into the city centre? 

Anyway, I left the suggestively named "kiss and ride" stopping bay and continued on to explore the rest of the suburb.

Cherrybrook, in line with the rest of The Hills, features gum-tree rich suburbia,

and well-kept modern-ish houses,

many of which feature aspirational suburban goals such as three-car garages and immaculately trimmed bushes.

Continuing through the suburb,

I stopped at Greenway Park, the site of community facilities like a pool, oval and community centre,

as well as a dog park with an interesting collection of benches.

Continuing slightly further up the road,

I saw a very promising sign.

The ducky crossing sign was not a false alarm. Across the road from the sign is this naturey piece of land, with a barbecue, a playground, some benches and paths,

and a bright green lake.

Whatever the green muck at the top of the lake is, it makes for an interesting fountain,

not to mention additional work for the resident duck to wade through.

While I didn't have time to do any today, it's worth mentioning that from this park, you can start on a number of bushwalks through Cherrybrook and deeper into the bushland of northern Sydney. I'll take this opportunity to give Wildwalks a shoutout, which is a fantastic website for finding local bushwalks in and around Sydney. 

I continued on to see if I could find anything else of note.

So was there anything else to see? 

Well, in a first for this blog, I found someone with a tube man in their front yard.

I also stumbled upon the cutely named and signposted Appletree Shops,

which turned out to be a slightly sad strip of stores.

And yes, there was plenty more well kept suburbia.

Satisfied that I'd seen enough of Cherrybrook, I called it and drove away.

Cherrybrook: 7.8/10 - not enough cherry.