An exploration of Narrabundah

Narrabundah is a suburb within the township of South Canberra.  In the past the lower parts of it had (by Canberra standards) much the same reputation as Soweto - enter at your own risk, preferably with a well-armed local guide.  The upper parts on the other hand had aspirations of allying with the nearby Red Hill or even Griffith.

We basically wanted to go for a walk so checking out whether this still applied seemed like an amusing target.  One area within the suburb also used to be the haunt of a colony of escaped Peafowl.  They had recently been subject to a control program after some killjoys objected to them for reasons I can't remember so it would be interesting to see if any had survived the purge.

Indeed some had.

One of the attractions of being up high is the views that are possible.  In this case the vista goes across Fyshwick and the Molonglo towards Mount Majura.

 Many of the houses up here looked large and modern.

 With very nice gardens: possibly they wouldn't have been so nice when tight water restrictions coincided with a drought.

We couldn't tell whether the modern houses in the higher elevations were updates of the original dwellings or if a knock-down and rebuild had happened.  On descending and crossing Caley St it appeared that the original smaller dwellings were still evident.

 We looked at allhomes.com to see what prices were like in the area and one of the small houses had sold recently for over a million:  on looking at the address the street was split between 'bundah and Griffith which possibly explained the price.

The shops seemed to be mainly poncy restaurants, including this place which seemed to offer Chinese cuisine - they had no Anglo words t say what they offered.

 The shops were otherwise remarkable mainly because of the Great Dane tied up outside one of them.  This looked closely at Tammy - in a friendly way - but she totally ignored it.  We concluded that Tammy's mental map put the Dane in the 'horse' category and thus to be ignored on neutral territory.

This infrastructure box (I don't know if it is power or phone inside it) had interesting graffiti in that the near side looked to be feminist while the door looked closer to misogynist (or at least mildly porn).

 I think this trailer - on the low side of Captain Cook Crescent - was on the cusp of moving from 'abandoned junk' to 'art installation'.

 Definitely art.  On a building in the social welfare hub beside the shops!

As we neared the Catholic Primary School I noticed a conservatively dressed woman looking into the school grounds.   I wondered what she was doing - was she a former nun feeling nostalgic?  No just someone who was enjoying a bunch of King-parrots trashing blossom on a tree!