Croydon: Its like no other Croydon

We're living in an Inner-West suburb of Sydney, 5 miles down the beautiful Parramatta Road from the Central Business District, which is called Croydon. We're two miles from Ikea, and there, the similarity ends. Its an almost grid-like arrangement of streets, but with plenty of cul-de-sacs which connect into each other, concentrating traffic onto the main roads, and keeping the streets pleasantly livable. We live on such a cul-de-sac (Google Earth) in a beautiful Federation bungalow, tastefully restored and extended to form a great place for us to live.

We've been here for a month, and it now feels like a home. We're embedded in the local community to the extent that we pop next door to use their pool, and get asked to pick up children from school. Ethan and Georgia now spend the hours from 4pm-8pm playing on the street with the other local children. There are three boys from 8yrs to 10yrs, so Ethan is immensely happy, and Georgia is enough of a tomboy to join in most games. Both children are now at Croydon Public School and coping well, we think. Education seems pretty traditional here and maybe more like the UK private sector than your average state primary school (small class sizes, lots of uniform, homework and games lessons).

Georgia did herself proud today at her first Australian competitive sports event, the Swimming Carnival at the local pool. She did wimp out of the first event, as the competition was pretty fierce but after a few stern words about 'taking part not winning' from her parents, she entered 2 races, getting ranked third in the backstroke race.

Anyway, back to Croydon...the neighbours and school mums have been really friendly and hospitable and basically we're very glad to be here rather than a more trendy central neighbourhood. We also have responsibility for a small dog called Cocoa, he's very cute and we've all grown very fond of him, just look at the pictures and you can see why and he's really affectionate, especially with the kids (OK, cleaning up dog poo and being licked a lot is a bit of a downside). We live near the station, so it's fairly easy to get into town quickly and past the station is a small parade of shops, including, thank goodness, the excellent Strand Cafe, which does an great cappacino, a frequent requiement after dropping the kids at school. Big shopping needs to be done at the local mall, I will be happy never to go into another shopping mall in my life after 8 months here.