Sydney art trail

I decided to spend a day looking at Sydney street art. People interested in street art should google it to find lists of famous works around the city. We didn't get that far. Chase and I found something painted on a wall or fence nearly every block.

Building sites, homes, community centers and bridges were routinely decorated. Businesses have adopted murals as a strategy to keep graffiti off their property. The community is richer for it.

Our plan was to catch the train to Redfern and start the day at the Carriageworks. The train line was shut for maintenance, so we caught a replacement bus through the suburbs instead. This gave us more things to look at and points of interest to catch on the way home.

We saw a Sydney Festival exhibition by artist NickCave called Until. The wonderful Carriageworks space was filled with shimmering crystals, thousands of wind spinners and millions of plastic beads. There was a huge projection space with changing visual commentary. People visiting the exhibition walked around spell bound, like they were visiting wonderland.

We snapped pictures of the street art throughout tree lined streets and stopped for a closer look Rekko Rennie's Welcome to Redfern work.

Passengers on the bus may have noticed a display of transformers at the Thai Pathong restaurant in Newtown. We spent 20 minutes looking at the window displays of very impressive recycled art. Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and the gang were all there, but at $25 000 per piece, they were way above our budget.

Our final stop for the day was Summer Hill, were I spied a mural of an Italian piazza. Set on a square bordered with Italian ristorantes, the painting made an impressive backdrop.

One of Sydney's more redeeming features is its commitment to storytelling through artwork.

Cost: Nil