Up my street

This is the outside of the apartment in Erskineville, in Sydney's inner west, where I'm staying. I'm about an hour's walk from the city centre and a bit further than that from Coogee beach. Just up the road is Newtown, which is a studenty area full of people with green hair and multiple piercings who tend to wear black. There are also lots of great cheap restaurants, pubs, second hand bookshops and (allegedly) the best coffee shop in the world, although I have yet to find it. Newtown's a lot of fun.



The station is just a few minutes up the road. Along the way you pass these houses, which are pretty typical of Sydney's inner suburbs: cast iron railings, balconies, blinds and flaky paint. They don't look wholly British to me - a lot of them still have almost a frontier town feel.



Trains from Erkskineville Station go to the city in about 15 minutes. The woman who works in the station office in the mornings is amazingly friendly - she told me I wasn't wrapped up warm enough when I bought a ticket to the Blue Mountains - and takes a real interest in the thousands of strangers who pass her window every day. This kind of attitude isn't at all unusual in Australia, but it's very rare in Britain these days.



This house is just up the road from the station, on the way to Newtown. Sydney's local councils have just "declared war" on graffiti artists, but nobody seems to be very bothered about all the graffiti in Newtown - Sydney's respectable mainstream and more colourful subculture generally exist side by side very happily.