Brisbane.com.au

Paddington's old worker's cottages have been given a new lease of life being set up as dress shops, cafes and homeware shops. Photos: Brisbane.com.au

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Paddington

It's a suburb with many interesting heritage homes where the median house price is now more than a million dollars.
But the appeal of Paddington to most visitors lies in its numerous fashion shops and Indie boutiques set up in quaint workers cottages, some of these a throwback to the 1860s when it was first settled.
In fact, picturesque timber workers cottages and Queenslander-style homes with tin roofs inhabit much of Paddington, which was one of the first suburbs to be gentrified.
In the 1980s, when sleepy Brisbane was still coming to grips with gentrification, Paddington already had a cafe and coffee shop culture in place.
Apart from women's clothes, there is a host of cafes, coffee shops, bars, antique shops, delis, a chocolate shop and art galleries - not to mention op shops - lining Caxton Street, Given Terrace and Latrobe Terrace, the main roads that skirt though Paddington.
The suburb is home to artists, musicians and aspiring writers.
Strange as it may seem, Paddington was considered the centre of Brisbane's punk and hard rock music scene in the 1980s, but all that's long gone.
Paddington is a great place to walk and browse, if not at designer and Indie fashions, then perhaps the Paddington Antique Centre, on Latrobe terrace, which is set up in the former Paddington Plaza Theatre. The building has at times been a cinema and dance hall.
It now houses more than 50 antique dealers.
If you want to stay on for the evening, there are small bars and night clubs in Given Terrace and Caxton Street.