Move to Malibu. Malibu is Paradise.
At first glance Newtown may seem like a suburb in disrepair but look a little closer and you’ll start to truly appreciate the finer details, like the culturally challenging street art painted all across this inner-city town in all it’s glory. When I saw gorgeous shades of rust-colours dominating this season’s autumn fashion palette, I couldn’t resist styling the beautiful Katie for my Newtown travel post in this knot detail maxi skirt, in honour of the beauty of Newtown’s urban decay.
In my opinion, the alternatively trendy suburb of Newtown in Sydney is the closest Australia gets to competing with the über alternative borough of Camden in London town. Newtown caters to the cool kids with a plethora of live music on offer, bars that allow you to party till late in a relaxed and casual setting, and a community acceptance that allows you to be whoever you want to be and dress however you want to dress.
Autumn is here in Sydney. While the nights are noticeably darker and cooler, it’s not exactly cold. At least, not in the way that us European’s know cold. Shivering on my balcony in Sydney when the temperature gauge still clocks 15 degrees celsius at night makes my family back in England extremely unsympathetic towards my plights. And really, rightly so. I can’t complain about the weather to them because, even with the odd days of storms and rain, and the occasional bitter chill in the shadows, in general the autumn and winter weather in Sydney is so mild and beautiful that my thick woollen coats will never get much wear here. And besides, whilst I never thought I’d say it, sometimes I truly miss the cold.
What a treat! Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending an all-day portrait photography workshop in Woolwich, Sydney. A wonderful birthday treat from my partner, the workshop was run by Angela Baxter, a talented family portrait photographer from Melbourne. Unfortunately for me, I was full of cold that weekend, but nothing was going to stop me! I had been looking forward to this for weeks!! Armed with tissues and flu medicine, I drove over to Woolwich on a fine Saturday morning while the rest of Sydney must have still been in bed nursing their hangovers.
Dubbed the “Geordie Shore” of Australia thanks to reality TV show ‘The Shire’, Cronulla has long been maligned by the rest of Sydney. Stereotypes of the nouveau riche, wannabe barbie dolls and true blue bogans covered in Southern Cross tattoos plague the reputation of The Shire. Perhaps jealously could explain why some Sydney-siders still perceive Cronulla with such a classist stereotype?
Whilst wandering through the beach-side Sydney suburb of Clovelly, we inadvertently stumbled upon Gordon’s Bay; a tiny little pocket of sand and rocks nestled between Clovelly and Coogee with magnificent scenery, looming cliff faces and a fossilised Jurassic Island kind of feel to it that, whilst being one of the smallest bays in Sydney, simultaneously had the ability to make me me feel oh so terribly insignificant. A small blip in the time that it’s taken to carve out the beautiful stripey formations in the rock face, or grow the thick green shrubbery that hangs over the cliffs like waterfalls. On this Autumn day in Sydney, the pungent smell of seaweed and the white cottagey building perching on the rocks in the distance could have almost convinced me that I was wandering around a beach back home in England. Almost. The palm trees edging over the cliff tops above and the cackle of Kookaburra’s in the distance was a firm reminder of my more exotic surroundings.
Here are my favourite photo’s from Gordon’s Bay xo