Beach House: Bundeena and Maianbar (Sydney by Technicality XV)

Can I interest you in some national-park-nestled Sydney by Technicality suburbs? Here's another two-for-one post.

Bundeena

Last I left you, I was enjoying the gorgeous outdoors of the Royal National Park. Well, follow one of the wild and green roads of the park and you'll eventually reach Bundeena, a suburb notable for existing inside the national park. 

Drive by the country-feeling houses, 

this really cute kindergarten,

and the Rural Fire Service (and bus depot?)

and you'll soon find yourself in the town centre. 

Bundeena CBD has a beachside town kind of vibe, with ice cream, cafes, boutiques and the like.

Special attention goes to this rusty pup,

and a unit unexplicably absorbed into the local supermarket. 

Having worked up an appetite with the previous exploration of the Royal National Park, it was time for lunch. This cafe (Driftwood by name) seemed as good an option as any. 

Here, you can meet the local cockies,

sit on some stylish furniture,

and enjoy some delightfully crispy fish and/or calamari and chips. This meal was tasty, but not life changing, however any shop that includes the tartare sauce without charging extra is a winner in my books.

Bonus cockatoo. 

Now refilled, I was at liberty to enjoy the suburb. 

Across the road from lunch is a park (where we met the rusty pup) leading to a beach on Port Hacking, an inlet underleath The Shire. 

Rather than heading onto the sand, I continued walking along the footpath, passing two arts.

This is the road to the Bundeena Ferry Wharf. 

From here you can catch a ferry to the rest of the city, docking in at Cronulla. 

By the wharf is a third art. This one a is a little bit more practical, with a shelter from the sun decorated inside and out. 

Also worth mentioning here are the very pretty rocky shores on the other side of the wharf. 

While jumping on the ferry out of here would've been a great way to end the post, I actually continued on in the car to one more Royal National Park enclosed suburb.

Bundeena: A very pretty place, technically in Sydney.

Maianbar

Jump back in the car and drive back through the national park, and you'll reach another secluded suburb nestled inside the park. Here's the unusually spelt Maianbar. Upon arriving in this residential pocket of bush, my first instinct was to get out and walk.

This turned out to be a mistake.

The mistake wasn't coming here, after all, it's hard to feel any animosity towards treehouses in the bush,

no, the mistake was heading down a really steep road on foot to do it. 

At the base, a secluded spot to dock your boat. 

But what goes down, must come up. Bonus dog who came to say hello.

And immediately left, disinterested. 

Once I needlessly tired myself out heading back to the car, I drove a short distance to the closest thing Maianbar has to a CBD - their general store.

Also of mention here though, is another access point to the shore. 

Not as pretty as Bundeena? Perhaps, with Bundeena's sandy shores replaced with a muddy riverbed.

But it's still pretty great to have these sorts of places within the bounds of Sydney (by Technicality). 

Maianbar: More of a private affair.

Oh, and I didn't do this myself, but it's worth mentioning that you can travel between Bundeena and Maianbar on foot, by talking a bushwalk and footbridge. Here's a photosphere from Google Maps - it seems like one worth doing some day.