Two kilometres of King Street — bookshops, Thai food, live music, murals and no chain stores worth mentioning.
Newtown runs along King Street, a two-kilometre commercial strip in the Inner West, ten minutes by train from Central and adjoining the University of Sydney.
It has been the city’s alternative quarter since the 1970s — students, musicians, activists, and a long-standing LGBTQ+ community — and while it has gentrified substantially it has kept more of its character than most equivalents.
Chain stores are conspicuously scarce, which is partly a matter of council policy and partly that the shopfronts are too small.
What is there
Bookshops — Better Read Than Dead, Gould’s Book Arcade (a Sydney institution, relocated and reduced but still standing), and secondhand shops throughout.
Food — the highest concentration of Thai restaurants in Sydney, plus Vietnamese, Nepalese, Ethiopian, Lebanese and a great deal of vegan cooking. Newtown has more vegetarian and vegan options than anywhere else in the city by a distance.
Pubs and live music — the Enmore Theatre on Enmore Road is Sydney’s best mid-size music venue, from 1908 and heritage-listed. The Vanguard, the Newtown Social Club site, the Sandringham, the Bank and the Marlborough all have rooms.
Murals — King Street and the lanes off it carry a large amount of street art, including the well-known “I Have a Dream” mural on the wall at Newtown station, painted in 1991 and now heritage-protected after a campaign.
Camperdown and Enmore
Camperdown Memorial Rest Park behind King Street is where Newtown sits on the grass at weekends.
Enmore Road, forking west, is quieter, cheaper and increasingly where the good restaurants are. It was designated Sydney’s first Special Entertainment Precinct in 2023, with relaxed noise and trading rules to support live music — a direct reversal of the lockout-law period.
The politics
Newtown is reliably the most left-voting seat in New South Wales and is comfortable telling you so. Rainbow crossings, protest posters and hand-painted signage are part of the streetscape.
Practicalities
Newtown station on the T2 line, or Macdonaldtown and St Peters at either end. Buses run along King Street.
It is busy on Friday and Saturday nights and perfectly safe.
Carriageworks is a fifteen-minute walk east, and the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the university is about the same north.
