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Discovering Newtown

Let's take a tour! Here is what you need to know about this eclectic neighbourhood.

Our beloved and bustling Newtown has a lot to offer.

What's Newtown known for

The University of Sydney is just up the road from Newtown, and students make up a big part of the area’s identity, from the rowdy mid-week pub crawls to the famously cheap lunchtime Thai specials. Newtown is also a proudly left-leaning area – the state member for Newtown is Greens MP Jenny Leong. Newtown is an after hours area: it’s all about the nightlife, from killer bars and breweries to restaurants, performance venues and King Street’s long roll call of pubs, which have been crucial to Sydney’s live music scene.

How do I get to Newtown

Newtown has a train station on the T2 Leppington Line, or you can get a bus down King Street which is a major thoroughfare serviced by the 422, 423, 426, 428, 370, 355 and 352 routes. If you’re driving there’s always plenty of parking to be found on the side streets.

What's nearby?

Newtown is at the heart of a closely packed hub of Inner West suburbs that pride themselves on their gently counter-culture, arty, rainbow spirit. Erskineville, Darlington, Stanmore, Enmore, and Camperdown border Newtown, and Marrickville, Redfern, Petersham and Chippendale are only a second step away.

Enmore Theatre

Sydney’s oldest and longest running live theatre, the heritage-listed Enmore has been a Newtown staple since 1908. Remodelled to fit the hip art deco movement back in the day, and still featuring the retro façade today, the 100-year-old theatre hosts bands, comedy acts and other performances from around the world.

Elizabeth's bookshop

A Newtown institution, the shelves are bursting with new and secondhand books covering Australian art, history and culture; biographies and memoirs; travel; law; philosophy; cooking and much more.

Elizabeth’s Bookshops are one of Australia’s largest second-hand bookshop operations, with 4 shops on both sides of the Australian continent. For 50 years, Elizabeth’s have been major dealers in second-hand, out-of-print and discounted new books.

Elizabeth’s is the home of the original Blind Date with a Book. Books are wrapped in brown paper with just a few clues written on the outside, so there’s no way you can judge a book by its cover.

Vintage magazines and antiquarian books, including first editions are also available.

The Vanguard

The Vanguard is a purpose-built live music venue. It’s location in Newtown points to the alternative programming, everything from burlesque shows to LP tours to author talks. It’s an intimate venue that holds under 200 people, making it well-suited to blues, jazz and folk music. What sets it apart is the in-house restaurant, so you can opt for a dinner-and-a-show package or share a pizza and some small plates before the show. The Vanguard is on the city end of King Street, a 10 minute walk from Newtown station.

Street Art

Newtown has a huge amount of amazing street art. Some of the famous murals are It’s a jungle sometimes on the corner of Enmore Road and Bailey Street, and the I have a dream mural on King Street (between Eliza and Mary streets). Some of my personal favourites are the Housing Bubble mural on the Urban Hotel, and the large-scale murals lining Camperdown Memorial Rest Park. If you’re interested in learning more about the local artists, you might want to book a spot on a Newtown street art tour.

Camperdown Cemetery

Founded in 1848, this cemetery is one of the oldest in Sydney. It was once much bigger, but a large part was converted into the connecting park in the 1940s. It’s interesting to walk around the cemetery and see the old tombstones that remain.

The houses around here are also historic. Walk back to King Street via Church Street and you’ll find some of the old row houses. These Victorian-era dwellings were once built cheaply for the working-class residents employed in factories or at the railway workshops, and are ironically now some of the more expensive properties to buy in Sydney.

'I have a dream' iconic Mural

One of the earliest and most famous murals in the neighbourhood (and Sydney) is the ‘I Have A Dream‘ mural. The “I Have A Dream” mural on King St in Newtown was created during a weekend in August 1991. Ms Pryor and Andrew Aiken, who later served a jail sentence in the UK for murder and now lives in Canada, had twice asked for permission to paint it but were refused. So they decided to do it anyway. They decided the best way to conceal themselves was by hiding in plain view. Starting at 7pm on Friday night, they worked into the night and continued the next night. When they needed extra height, they borrowed a friend’s cherry picker to finish the job. Ms Pryor described the experience as “wonderful”.
Ms Pryor, 58, described the mural as her “gift” to the Newtown community. “It was a gesture made by two people in dire circumstances,” she said.

The mural reflects three themes from the 20th century, Ms Pryor said: gender equality, environmental activism and civil rights. The mural’s location on King St perfectly fits the reference to Martin Luther King Junior’s iconic speech, I Have A Dream.

In March the Marrickville Council commissioned an independent report to assess the mural’s value. It found “the mural is of local historical, aesthetic and social heritage significance”.

Natalia Buttner

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