Chatswood

Chatswood is a suburb of Willoughby city, to the north of the Sydney CBD, an area obviously called North Sydney. In the 1996 Census of Population and Housing, Willoughby city had a population of 53,735 people. Of those, 60% were Australian born but 82% were Australian citizens. Nearly 26% were from countries other than Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, UK or the USA. And close to 65% spoke only English at home.

One of Chatswoods' attractions is its shopping opportunities, having 3 major shopping centres, several smaller plazas and malls, as well as many individual shops. One peculiarity of Chatswood is that we have two movie cinema complexes within perhaps 50-100 metres. What's so weird about that? Well, they're both Hoyts! The first one is in the Mandarin Center and the second is in the recent extenstion to Westfields. Although it means you only have to look at one website for both :)

Chatswood is also known as having a higher than average concentration of asian immigrants and descendants, mostly Chinese(both the Hong-Kong and mainland variety) it would seem but also some Korean and Japanese. Chatswood is probably a place to avoid by those that feel insecure about their (or others) racial and ethnic origins.

Another peculiarity of Chatswood is the McDonald's "resturant" on both Victoria avenue and Archer street. Again, what's so weird about that? Well it's not actually on the corner. It appears that they bought two stores and joined them together so that they basically wrap around the stores on that corner. The main entrance is on Archer street where you get your food. The eating area is in the other part, connected by a somewhat narrow (two people wide?) corridor and also has a street entrance. It's amusing to occasionally see people who are unaware of the layout come into the Victora ave. entrance and go "wha-?!", since the linking corridor isn't obvious from that entrance.