Street Art in Sydney, Australia

Each year Sydney's Inner West Council hosts a celebration of street art called Perfect Match. The council matches up owners of walls in need of beautifying with artists who express themselves through the use of spray paint and brushes.

 As well as brightening up the neighbourhood, Perfect Match hosts free walking, bicycle and bus tours allowing onlookers to view the art as it is being created, meet the artists while they work and see some of the finished works. David and I were due to join a bicycle tour to do just that last weekend. However living in a city with one of the world's best climates we tend to be very fickle about the weather. If  the temperature drops a few degrees lower than perfect, or there are a couple of clouds on the horizon, David declares the day ruined. With wind and rain forecast on the day of our street art cycling tour, we abandoned the idea and stayed home. As it turned out, the sun came out around midday and the afternoon weather was lovely but how we were to know that.

I wasn't going to miss the street art entirely though. Yesterday we took a train to Newtown and went exploring on our own. In the process I learned a few things: -

• Printing a coloured map off the internet with a black and white printer doesn't really work. Actually I already knew this but it didn't stop me trying - again, and again! What was it Einstein said about the definition of insanity: 'Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.' 

• Google maps is a very useful tool - if you can get the hang of it. If not, it has a tendency to send you in completely the wrong direction. Which way is north again?

• Distances seem a lot greater when you are walking. Next time we're taking our bikes.

• Street art can be elusive. It is surprisingly easy to walk straight past it without knowing it's there. More than once we had to double back because we failed to turn around and look at a wall whose display was hidden from view in the direction we were walking.

• Spending the day playing tourist in your own backyard can be a lot of fun. The Inner West of Sydney is so different from our leafy, open-spaced sheltered environment on the North Shore, it could almost be a different planet.

I also learned that street art in Sydney is as vibrant and interesting as anywhere in the world. Here are some of the murals we saw. There are many, many more we didn't get to.

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Tips and tricks and things to know: - 

• Click - here - to download a map of street art in Sydney's Inner West council area.

• Click - here - for information on street art in the City of Sydney council area.

I am not the only Sydney Travel Blogger who loves street art. For street art posts by a few of my blogger friends see the links below - 

• Paula of Sydney Expert - http://sydneyexpert.com/inner-west-street-art-walk/

• Silke of Happiness and Things - http://www.happinessandthings.com/2015/11/16/sydneys-ever-evolving-street-art/

• Paula of Contented Traveller. Paula's post is on Street Art in Wollongong but I wanted to include it because The Gong has some of the best murals I have seen - http://www.contentedtraveller.com/wonderwalls-festival-street-art-in-the-gong/

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like - The Murals of Valparaiso

Next Friday/Saturday The Travelling Lindfields will return to the USA with the final post in our series on Historic Houses and Gardens. After that I intend to catch up on some of those cycle path posts I promised weeks ago. Then it's off to Western Australia for this year's wildflower season.

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