The Explore Eat Experience journey started with me thinking it would be fun to go to lunch at Sydney suburban restaurants alphabetically, by public transport where practical/possible to do so. Later I pondered if that was enough. It would be more thorough to, say, visit the Mosque at Auburn and then have lunch. Then my curiosity took hold and the idea expanded to explore the origins and history of the suburb and learn any interesting facts I could discover and share.

I threw the idea out to some friends and some of them have been travelling with me on a monthly - ish - basis since February 2022.

How to bite an elephant

How to begin though! Whilst the principle of doing something alphabetically seemed simple enough, how many suburbs are there and which one would be first, second, third? I started, thanks to Wikipedia and Excel, listing the suburbs each Local Government Area (LGA - did any of us know that three letter acronym prior to covid restrictions?). Of course, months later I found a Local Government website that had done the same thing….. I limited Sydney to the area shown on the map.

Fun Fact 1: If you count the suburbs such as Ryde, Top Ryde, East Ryde, West Ryde as one suburb, there are 530 Sydney suburbs. If you count all those suburbs, say Bondi, Bondi Beach and Bondi Junction as individual suburbs there are over 650. Either way there’s a lot of them.

Fun fact 2: No suburb begins with the letter X - yet.

Fun fact 3: Two suburbs beginning with F have changed their names:

• Flemington to Sydney Markets and Homebush West

• Freshwater to Harbord and then back to Freshwater

One bite at a time

• I’d been provided with the history of our house from our LGA’s Historian librarian and thought he’d be useful for broader LGA information, which he was. After contacting him and spending time trawling through reference books of all Sydney suburbs at our wonderful library, I decided I didn’t really want to begin in my own backyard and hit the internet.

• I initially landed on Ashfield - lots of history, important to the First Nations people, founded in the first two weeks of white settlement, multi cultural, a good mix of old and new - and most importantly good food for a reasonable price. I stumbled across an Ashfield tour - which turned out to be someone holding a camera and silently walking up and down the main street, complete with car noises - not particularly useful. At the same time I came across the William Angliss Institute, which offered lunch for customers by graduating students, in Alexandria with dates. AH! A suburb beginning with A, my starting letter, and fixed dates to work towards! Now all I had to do was plan an itinerary and invite some of the gang along. Project management skills at the ready, it was time to kick off. I planned around two hours of walking then lunch, but I couldn’t control the weather - it bucketed down.

Taking the second and subsequent bites

• When a new walker joins, they have the opportunity to choose three suburbs that they’d like to visit, beginning with each letter (trusty Excel again), 25 x 3 suburbs due to the lack of X factor. I’ve totalled those lists and have chosen the highest/ second highest numbered suburb for every trip - group contribution and participation!

Principles

• These were established or have naturally evolved:

  • Must have restaurants with reasonably good food at a reasonable price;

  • Travel by public transport wherever practical;

  • Explore on weekdays;

  • If a tour exists by someone who knows the area better than the research I can do - book the tour!

  • Take advantage of what else is happening. If an event occurs in a suburb that is outside the alphabetical order, go for it!

  • Allow more time than expected - women need coffee and toilets and talk!

  • Download that FLUSH app, refer last comment;

  • Herd the cats when necessary, laugh it off when not.