another graf hotspot

JCJ and I discovered another graffiti hotspot today as we went on an exploratory cycle around Sydney. Having looked at the surf webcamBlogger: ...musing... - Create Posts and deciding the seas were a little too big for diving we decided instead to dust off the push bikes and head for Balmain. JCJ asked me to go easy on him as he'd not cycled for a while but as he was on his Scott Sub 10 and I was on the antique Santa Cruz Chameleon, complete with dodgy brakes and flat-ish tractor tyres I guessed things would be even on the ride.

The route was Cremorne to and over the Harbour Bridge, through the Rocks and over Pyrmont Bridge and from there to and over Anzac Bridge. From there it was to the Balmain East peninsula for a spot of lunch and then we retraced our route home for a total of around five hours out and about. Highlights of the trip...finally took this picture of a sticker I'd run past a couple of times recently. It's pretty well right under the Bridge (cue Red Hot Chilli Peppers.) Onwards along the Hungry Mile quickly passing over Pyrmont Bridge and around the restored piers, gawping at the boats moored alongside and en route to the small, old wooden bridge under the big, new concrete Anzac bridge. I'd run over the old bridge in my Sydney Half Marathon and hoped to ride over it today, stoppinf to take a few pics. When we got there it was closed off, looking like it is typically closed access and was opened specially for the run. Bugger. We headed up onto Anzac Bridge, itself an impressive structure.

Once over the bridge we found a few sticker street art examples on a derelict pub at the end of Victoria Road, continued on to look at a derelict power station that would have provided a load of fabulous photo ops were it not sealed from public access, presumably for public safety reasons. Shame that. We stopped to chat to a local Sydney Water employee who gave us the low down on the thing, basically that it will likely be pulled down so a load of wanky appartment blocks can go up, but that the sewerage treatment block would stay as it is heritage listed. Fat chewed, history lesson complete, we continued on our way.

The next significant find was a park with a kind of amphitheatre around a basketball court, the closed side a tall wall that had been graffiti bombed and was, when we arived, being worked on by two artists. I slowly worked my way from one end of the wall to the other, clicking pic after pic, stopping only to chat to the artists who seemed as pleased about our street art enthusiasm as they were about their ability to work unhindered in this place.