Hello.

Last post I was exploring Beecroft with Justin from Humans of Eastwood, and his buddy also named Justin. They took me to see some nearby points of interest which turned out to be in Cheltenham rather than Beecroft. This is those.

Cheltenham

In relative luxury for this blog, the two minute journey from Beecroft to Cheltenham was sitting in the passenger seat of a car. From my window, I saw many leafy streets and many fancy houses which I failed to capture,

as well as the surprisingly modern Cheltenham Railway Station (of which I only managed this shockingly bad picture).

We soon parked and I was able to actually document a small portion of what can be found in the wilds of Cheltenham.

Observation number one: Cheltenham has lots of fancy houses. This one towers above its neighbours due to being a three-story fortress sitting on a hill.

Its smaller next door neighbour gives a very zen vibe for some reason,

and much of the nearby houses are somewhere in the middle, from unassuming upper-middle class brick suburbia on large land,

to shutters McGee,

to a roof you just want to sled off.

Nearby is a path into Lane Cove National Park. We weren't here for bushwalking today, but Cheltenham joins onto all of the other northern suburbs that sit by the Lane Cove River by means of walking trails through the National Park.

We entered to check out the first suburban highlight of Cheltenham.

Through some questionable paths,

to get to a fence labeled Ahimsa.

Ahimsa is a house and meditation retreat owned by the National Trust of NSW. To get there, we had to trudge through the bush,

past this remarkable garden with growing grapes,

to reach the building.

Inside are some basic amenities, from a fireplace,

to yoga mats,

to a WW2 era shower.

Out the back - a pile of logs and a kombi van, as you may expect.

Not to mention an outhouse which I'm sure you would share with all kinds of bush critters.

And I'm apparently not the only one who appreciated the grapes either.

After this, we headed back out onto the street,

where I was led to our next Cheltenhamian stop.

This thing.

Isn't that just a tunnel under the M2 Motorway?

You're absolutely right, but I admit it's cool in its own grungy, muddy way.

Here, there was some festive graffiti,

and, most importantly, a family of ducks with actual ducklings.

I proceeded to melt.

Now the other side of the tunnel is actually Epping (the tunnel itself sort of straddles the border), but I'm not going to count poking my head out of the other side as completing Epping. That would be barbaric.