My, how they’ve changed

WHEN Sydney won the right to hold the 2000 Olympics, it signalled a major transformation for inner-western suburbs such as Homebush Bay, Rhodes, Cabarita and Mortlake, all traditional industrial precincts along the Parramatta River.

My, how they’ve changed. I well remember Rhodes, for instance — now home to the largest IKEA store in the Southern Hemisphere — as the only station on the main northern railway line where you had to hold your nose to combat the pollution.

All have become hubs for Sydney’s new style of affluent, cosmopolitan, apartment-based living and all of them are worth exploring for their cafes, restaurants, boutiques, parklands and attractive walkways along a now much cleaner Parramatta River.

Mortlake and the adjacent Breakfast Point development on the old AGL (Australian Gas Light Company) site provide excellent material for a half-day excursion.

If you can get there early enough, I’d start with breakfast — how appropriate — at Breakfast Point, in the classy Olive Kitchen, a highly rated Sydney restaurant where a leisurely lunch is also on the menu.

Then wander along the Breakfast Point foreshore towards the take-off point for the Mortlake Ferry — a cable-operated car ferry across the river — and follow the riverside boardwalk to Wangal Centenary Bushland Reserve, named after one of the Aboriginal clans that settled the area many thousands of years ago.

There’s lots to look at on the way and once you get there — pelicans, rowers, yachts, ferries, maritime history — and a there are also a few spots where you might drop in a line.

Return via the main road, Hilly Street, which really isn’t that hilly at all, and have a refreshing ale at the Palace Hotel It’s a time capsule of a bygone era and must have been packed for the “six o’clock swill” in the days when some 5000 workers were employed at AGL.

Be quick, though. The Palace is ripe for gentrification and I’m sure it won’t be long before the laminex makes way for polished timer and/or stainless steel.