Surry Hills: Live, Love, Sell

Less than 1.5km from the CBD, Surry Hills is home to many creative agencies and enterprises, renowned design stores and some top restaurants.

Live

Once the centre of Sydney’s garment trade, the Surry Hills of today is a trendy and essentially gentrified inner city address with a distinct arty edge. There are still some factory outlets closer to Central Station on the northern side of the suburb, although many of the warehouses have been reclaimed for conversion, given the high demand for residential accommodation throughout the area.

Love

The main thoroughfare of Crown Street has been completely reinvented as a cosmopolitan restaurant and entertainment hub, with its eclectic eateries and revamped pubs such as The Clock, The White Horse and The Dolphin.

Increasingly a fashion mecca, Surry Hills has great vintage stores, especially at the Oxford Street end of Crown Street. The first Saturday of every month sees Sydney’s young and fashionable head to the Surry Hills markets, held in Shannon Reserve on Crown Street.

The area’s many galleries exhibit young local artists, but perhaps the most famous would have to be the Brett Whiteley Gallery on Raper Street, with its iconic oversized burnt matchsticks framing the entryway.

Sell

Cleveland Street, which separates the more upmarket eastern side of Surry Hills from the west, is renowned for its affordable ethnic cuisine. The Eastern Distributor road works gave the area a massive boost, blocking off the formerly high-traffic Bourke Street and transforming it to a quieter, leafy enclave lined with large Victorian terraces, groovy cafes and interesting specialty stores.

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