The Pretty Good Outdoors: Birchgrove

Summer is upon us. What better way to celebrate than a ferry ride to a gorgeous suburb with nothing but blue skies?

Birchgrove

Birchgrove is a suburb in that harboury bit of the Inner West that isn't really the Inner West. Obligatory Sydney Harbour ferry photo below.

I actually missed the ferry that goes here, and the next one wasn't for another hour, so I ended up catching a ferry to neighbouring Balmain East and walking 20 odd minutes to get in.

Strangely, the start of Birchgrove is actually at Balmain Ferry wharf, 

where folks were actually taking a dip in the harbour.

My exploration of Birchgrove began at Mort Bay Park, an attractive piece of public space on the water. 

Here, you can take some dramatic photos of old infrastructure, 

or just good old fashioned harbour shots.

Rather than head into the suburb proper on a lovely day like this, it seemed best to hug the shoreline instead, so I followed the park along the water. 

On the way was this thing,

the "to-be-expected" waterside views, 

a very nice grassy area, 

and some of these things that look like butts.  

Here's a story from my childhood. 

In year 2 we took an excursion to Darling Harbour, where they had those metal butt things all along the water. One kid from school ran along the harbour touching every one of them, because that's what you do when you're seven and you see things that look like butts. Some guy's jacket was on one of the butts, and when my hyperactive classmate touched the butt that had his jacket on it, we could hear the stranger saying "psycho" to his girlfriend. It was a very good excursion.

Anyway.

Follow the shoreline and Mort Bay Park soon connects to the next park on the list, Ballast Point Park.

Here, there are more (better) views,

and this big thing.

Ballast Point Park is actually a really cool park with space to picnic and plenty of spots to explore, but if you take the stairs up,

you get to Australia's answer to Stonehenge. 

Rather than stick around and complete every corner of this park though, I chose to continue through Birchgrove to hopefully see a bit more of the actual suburb. 

As expected it's pretty swish, with streets of very stylish older homes. 

Some show off the old convict look,

while some are a little more stately. 

Regardless of the individual style though, every house here is uniquely beautiful.

As a side note, the streets here are so narrow that parked cars are required to park half of their vehicle on the kerb,

which is the purpose of these boxes half drawn on the footpath. 

Turning the corner revealed even more pretty vintage homes, with this particular street's offerings being a mix of houses up in the hills,

and rows of fancy terraces. 

From here, I was on the home stretch, with only a single park left to get to the ferry out of there. 

Well, one and a half parks, as I crossed through this small playground,

through a little bit more residential Birchgrove,

to reach the final park for the day, Birchgrove Oval. 

This is where people partake in that strange activity called cricket (the game where people wear white and stand in the sun for the entire day).

As you can tell, cricket is not a game which interests me,

so I continued on past Birchgrove Oval,

to get back out onto the street.

Nearly there.

This last Birchgrove street contained equally fancy houses to the last, albeit in a less classic style. 

You know how they say opposites attract? Well this is a match made in heaven.

Also this house is so fancy that it has a dome. It looks like one of those buildings that is in basically every botanic garden. 

Soon, I came to the end of Birchgrove's final street,

where the ferry wharf proudly lies. 

What a lovely walk. 

Birchgrove: Fancy, but good fancy.