We took the train from Epping to Concord West and spent the morning on one of the trails through Sydney Olympic Park — a genuinely pleasant place to be, full of joggers, cyclists and families simply enjoying the space. The day began warm and bright, and then, about fifteen minutes into a coffee under a park shelter, the rain came down like a hammer.
We stayed dry, found a bus to Strathfield and a train to Burwood, and had lunch at the magnificently named Wonton Warrior.
The parkland underfoot is not as innocent as it looks. Before the 2000 Olympics, Homebush Bay was one of Sydney’s most poisoned corners — a century of abattoirs, brickworks, an armaments depot and industrial dumping had left the ground badly contaminated. Preparing it for the Games meant one of the largest urban clean-ups the country had attempted, consolidating and capping the waste beneath the very lawns the joggers now use. It was praised as a model of “green” regeneration and criticised by some as burying the problem rather than removing it — and both things are, in their way, true.
Further reading: The remediation of the Olympic parklands