Lakemba

I spent a few hours in Lakemba with O, her son H, and Bob the Builder. It's a suburb in Sydney's south-west which is known for its concentration of people from Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries, a demographic reflected in the shops and restaurants along the main street. On an extremely hot and sunny day, we ate delicious Lebanese food at Jasmin (30b Haldon Street), a friendly restaurant with delightful murals (including one of the Tuna Steak Isles, shown below). Bob the Builder looked on as we tucked in to grilled chicken served with chickpea sauce, excellent, silky babaganouj, juicy lamb sausage, fresh tabouleh and falafels. Afterwards, we wandered down the street, ending up in Patisserie Arja, where we had the most incredibly rich dessert, kanafeh, consisting of pastry, sweet, ricotta-like cheese, topped with semolina and baked, and served with cream and chopped pistachios.

Powerhouse Museum

The Powerhouse Museum is "Sydney's museum of science, technology, design, decorative arts and social history" – quite a lot for one museum to be treating with, but its location, a former power station, is generously proportioned, and under its huge arching roof, a panoply of exhibitions are taking place, both permanent and temporary: AC/DC, Australia's Family Jewels, people in AC/DC t-shirts wandering around to the sound of "You Shook Me All Night Long"; Ecologic, Creating a Sustainable Future, maps and graphs about disaster; Benini, Creating The Look, a brilliantly designed exhibition about Australian fashion photographer Bruno Benini, complete with darkroom and studio; and The 80s are Back, a tunnel you could walk down, to the sound of 1980s music, to be bombarded with images from the 1980s. I was too frightened enter the tunnel, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. More from this amazing museum, plus pies, tomorrow.

Cabramatta – People

Cabramatta is a suburb in Sydney's south-west which is also known as "Little Asia". As a settlement, it dates back to 1795. There was a surge of immigration from south-east Asia, particularly Vietnam, in the 1980s; according to the 2006 census the languages spoken at home by residents of "Cabra" were Vietnamese (34%), Cantonese (15%), English (11%) and Thai (10.6%), with Khmer, Laotian and Mandarin also spoken. I was there for three hours and took so many photos that I will have to depart from the place a day concept to show all of them. Today: the people working in the stores, selling gewgaws on the pavement, eating in the restaurants or strolling the high street.