Our Little Jaunt

Darlinghurst, Sydney – Add N to X = Darlo

(n+x=d)

D is for Darlinghurst – Discuss?

n = Oxford St?
x = Kings X?
d = The Calm between chaos and the deep blue something; Darlinghurst

Darlinghurst Art and Grafitti

NB. If my maths is a bit off then don’t worry, I have a strong grasp of marketing maths… basically it will come out to agree with my point of view.

As we have said before on the blog, we arrived here not really knowing anything about Sydney and have been talking again tonight about how we have landed in such a mint little area (it’s actually a really big area, but it is little in the Sydney-scale).

Everyone who we have told where we are living has sucked their teeth a bit and said about the prostitutes (both male and female BTW) of Darlinghurst and the muggings in King’s Cross, but it is only like living in any inner city area. For God’s sake it isn’t like London for example where if you got mugged, you’d get stabbed to make sure that you didn’t go after whoever did it.

I recall, I was talking to my close friend who moved to Mexico City about 18 months ago about this just after he moved out there as it was on the news with all these kidnappings, and drug muders – generally not particularly pleasant stuff and he made a very good point – basically if he went out in Sheffield he was far more likely to get glassed or thumped in a bar than he was to be kidnapped in Mexico City. It is quite simply a numbers game.

Anyway, we live about half way between Oxford St and King’s Cross and to be honest, it is a really quiet street, we don’t have very quiet neighbours sometimes, but we had that when we lived in Newcastle Under Lyme… we had the neighbours from hell for about six months to be frank, which does give us a degree of how bad it could be. We get noise from the binmen, we get noise from people coming in and out of the apartment and probably most noise from people putting out their bottles for recycling – everyone seems to have a bin full to dump just as we are dropping off to sleep.

There are cool things to look at everywhere… It sounds cliche but there is the National Art School in Darlinghurst and there is art and grafitti (alpha-graffitti if we are being accurate) in the most odd places. Chalk seems to be the weapon of choice and the kerbs, pavements, walls and doorways have intricate stencils and provoking comments in the most random of places.

For example, The Green Park has a mural painted on the garden wall – nothing spectacular, but thought provoking given that it is a pretty popular gay bar, the picture of Santa & The Shark was on a cafe; Forbes & Burton over Christmas opposite the Art College, there are coffee shops and bars all over this part of town, all with brilliant art, pictures and photos. I get the impression that some try too hard – especially on the Kings X end of Victoria St. but still its nice to spend time walking and watching.

It will be quite funny when our parents come over we have so much to show them locally, that the downsides will hopefully be overlooked – it isn’t perfect but for $400 a week – we really can’t complain.

I was looking at a few sites the other day about Darlinghurst when I came across someone who runs a mint website called Darlinghurst Nights and they had also linked to a second site called This Is For That. Anyone who knows me will know that I have quite a penchant for art – mainly contemporary art and photography, and things that are a bit different, but… I love photos.

*ramble*It is one of the things that always amazed me about Matt Next Door – he could just magic up something out of nothing with his camera – I hope that soon I will be able to link to a site with all his pictures on – hint hint!. Speaking of photography, I am still hoping that I will get to see another Jacob Holdt exhibition so that I can buy another copy of American Pictures, as someone has nicked my copy.

ANYWAY – the pictures on Darlinghurst Nights and This Is For That are really good – I don’t know if the bloggers are the artists, if they are then great Kudos to them, as I enjoy seeing the pictures and the thoughts on my way to work and on my walks around this part of town.

I am going to make a more concious effort to stop and take more pictures of things out and about here – my walk to work is really pleasant, and I might start taking a bit of a detour if I can get up early enough to have a bit more of a nose around between Darlinghurst, Palmer, Oxford and Stanley Streets. King’s Cross is a bit far to start delving into in the morning, and I am not too bothered about it at the moment… and it is a bit dodgy looking sometimes.

I am going to come back to this post in the future – as I think that there is a lot more to write.

Himself

Tags: apartment, art, Australia, darlinghurst, NSW, Sydney

Confirmed an Studio Apartment in Sydney

Apartment in Darlinghurst, Sydney – CHECK

Our New Rented Gaff in Darlinghurst - "DarloDigs"

We have confirmed an apartment in Darlinghurst, Sydney this week called DarloDigs (her description, not ours), we plan to move in on the 1st December and are there for at least two months, I suspect that we will extend it, but for now, its going to be a base for us.

Google Map and Street View show it just as well:

Maps

View Larger Map

StreetView

View On Streetview

The lady who owns it seems rather cool, and her friend is from Nutton, so he is actually from about 3/4 mile from where we have been living for the last 3 years…

Some more pictures below:

[View with PicLens]

We are so chuffed that we got it all sorted before we got there, as everyone told us what a hard time that we might end up having if we didn’t get something now. November/December are just crazy in terms of everyone wanting to be in Sydney for Christmas and New Year.

Some Advice:

Don’t believe everything on GumTree, we had some friends looking for an apartment to share with us, and it turned out to be a scam… not what we were expecting, but it did sound a little odd from early on. I think if we had been less savvy then we could have been stung.

Other bits and bobs:

We have sorted Visa’s out this week – we are entering into Australia Working Holiday Visas (click the link) which is intended for those under 30. (I just scraped in ). It was approved within 4 hours and cost about £250 for the two of us.

I have handed in my notice on my consultancy contract at AdStorm and am leaving a few days before we fly. I have a fair few bits to tie up over the next few weeks, so it is a little stressful at the moment, but… hey ho. I am tidying up all the other bits and bobs with my other companies, and things are looking as though at the moment we will be leaving on the 30th November.

More News To Follow I Guess.

A.

Tags: apartment, darlinghurst, darlodigs, Sydney