Oatley is a suburb in Southern Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the St George area. Oatley lies in the local government area of Georges River Council. It lies on the northern side of the tidal estuary of the Georges River and its foreshore includes part of Oatley Bay and Lime Kiln Bay, and all of Neverfail Bay, Gungah Bay and Jewfish Bay.
History Aboriginal history The area now known as Oatley lies either on the traditional lands of Dharug people or coastal Eora people, both of whom spoke a common language. It lies close to the lands of Tharawal people, on the south bank of the river. Georges River Council acknowledges that the Biddegal/Bidjigal/Bedegal clan of the Eora are the original inhabitants and custodians of land and water in the Georges River region.
Evidence of Aboriginal occupation of the land now known as Oatley exists in the form of numerous shell middens and rock shelters near the shore of Georges River. Lime Kiln Bay once had more extensive shell middens, made over centuries by local people.
Settlement One of the earliest contacts between British settlers and Aboriginal people occurred on 20 January 1788, just to the west of Oatley. Arthur Philip and Philip Gidley King, leading a party of seamen from the First Fleet rowing two open boats, explored the 'South-West Arm of Botany Bay' (now Georges River). They are now thought to have gone as far as Lime Kiln Bay, where they landed at two locations, thought to be just west of the boundaries of modern-day Oatley. Not finding enough freshwater, around Botany Bay and its two 'arms', the colonists moved on to Port Jackson, where the settlement of Sydney began six days later.
Bass and Flinders explored the Georges River in 1795 in Tom Thumb, and are believed to have landed at Neverfail Bay and obtained freshwater from a spring there.
Lime Kiln Bay takes its name from early settlers burning the shells from the once extensive Aboriginal middens there, to create lime.The kilns were located in what is now Oatley Park.
This suburb's name can be traced to James Oatley Snr, a convict clockmaker, who was transported to Botany Bay for life in 1814. Seven years later, in 1821, Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted Oatley a conditional pardon and appointed him overseer of the Town Clock for his work in installing the clock at Hyde Park Barracks.Arch Gray Collection, Society of Australian Genealogists, Sydney, NSWAGCI Index (Australian Genealogical Computer Index), Society of Australian Genealogists
James Oatley, Snr was granted land in what is now Oatley in 1833, although he never lived there. He called his land Needwood Forest. Oatley's land extended from Gungah Bay northward to what later became Hurstville Road and Boundary Road. It to passed to his eldest son Frederick Oatley, who sold it in 1881 to Charles Cecil Griffiths, who was buying up land along the new railway line, with his brother, Frederick Griffiths. James Oatley's second son, also James Oatley, became an early mayor of Sydney and member of the NSW Legislative Assembly.
The railway line running through Oatley was opened as far as Sutherland in December 1885. It included a major bridge crossing of the Georges River, from Oatley to Como. The first Oatley railway station opened in 1886; its construction said to have been a condition of the transfer of land from Charles Griffiths for the railway reservation.
The arrival of the railway led to the first residential subdivisions within the area of the original land grant. Many of the streets of the suburb were laid out in these subdivisions. Almost all of Oatley's streets to the east of the railway line, bear Victorian-era first names corresponding to members of the Griffiths family. The upper part of Wyong St, before it extended all the way to Neverfail Bay, was known as Cecil Street. There is also a Griffiths Street, west of the railway line.
Slightly predating the subdivisions of the Griffiths' land was a small hamlet on the flat land near the shore of Neverfail Bay, inhabited mainly by oyster farmers. In its earlier years, the hamlet was reportedly known, informally, as 'Thompsonville', the name of one of the oyster growing families.
On 17 August 1898, Oatley was the site of a pursuit and gun battle involving a party of police and George Peisley (or Peasley), a fugitive cattle and horse thief, who was using a sandstone cave on the eastern side of Gungah Bay as his hide out. Peisley escaped capture, but was arrested at Arncliffe on the following day and eventually sentenced to four years hard labour.
Spurred by invasion fears around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1905, land around Neverfail Bay near the Como railway bridge was reserved for military purposes, but nothing was built there. In the same year, the railway line and station were relocated further west to the current alignment.
The post office opened in 1903, thus giving the district its official name of Oatley. Prior to this, the area west of the railway line was officially in the suburb of Hurstville and attached to the Hurstville Post Office with "Oatley's" in parentheses at the end of the address. Likewise, the streets east of the railway line were officially in the suburb of Kogarah and attached to the Kogarah Post Office. In the late 1890s both Hurstville and Kogarah were much larger suburbs and were later divided up into separate suburbs.
Oatley is notable as the terminus of the first railway electrification project in Sydney, which reached this station from Sydney Central in 1926. The first scheduled electric train service left Oatley station, at 5:18 am, on Sunday, 3 October 1926.Following construction of the Woronora Dam, since 1942, the old Como railway bridge and the former railway reservation has been used by the main water pipeline from the dam to Penshurst. The pipeline is buried where it passes through the Oatley Memorial Gardens, but remains exposed in the old railway cutting south of Neville St.
In January 1946, the foreshore of Oatley Bay, near Russell Street, was the site of a horrific fatal shark attack, in shallow water. Large sharks have been sighted in the shallow bay, many times over the years, and dogs have been taken. Swimmers at Oatley Park and the Oatley Pleasure Grounds are protected by shark-proof enclosures.
Oatley had a strong association with the growing, and consumption, of Sydney Rock Oysters. In November 1953, an Oatley man won the title of oyster-eating champion of NSW, by consuming 26 dozen oysters in 30 minutes. The runner up, also from Oatley, pulled out after consuming 21 dozen oysters in 25 minutes. The contest took place in front of a crowd of 3,000, at Moorefields racecourse, Kogarah. In 1949, an Oatley woman was reported to have opened—the word 'shucked' was not as commonly used in those times—90 dozen oysters in an hour and a half, a sustained rate of a dozen a minute.
When a group gathered in Oatley Park in December 1959, to form a Bowling Club, it was inevitable that the founding members should choose a clock as the club emblem. The hands on the clock were set at 15 minutes after 10 - the precise time the first meeting of the Oatley Bowls Club was opened.The Book of Sydney Suburbs, Compiled by Frances Pollen, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, Published in Australia , page 193 The club has since closed, though the greens and Club premises remain.
The Oatley campus of Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education opened in 1981 on the site of the former Judd's Brick Works and quarry. In 1981, when many teachers' colleges were amalgamated, it became The St George Institute of Education, part of Sydney College of Advanced Education, and subsequently a campus of the University of New South Wales. It is now a secondary school – the Oatley Senior Campus of the Georges River College.
Prior to the formation of Georges River Council, in 2016, the part of Oatley to the west of the railway line was in the City of Hurstville, and the part of Oatley to the east of the railway line was in the City of Kogarah.
Local industries Although now an entirely residential suburb, Oatley was the site of various industries in the past.
Oyster farming
For over a century, Sydney Rock Oysters were grown commercially along the shores of Georges River at Oatley. Freshwater from the Woronora River, a tributary that joins the Georges River opposite Oatley, caused suitable growing conditions—clean water and slightly reduced salinity— for faster-growing, plump rock oysters. There is a significant freshwater component in the flow of the Georges River itself; at times a small standing wave develops across the narrow part of the river estuary, between Jewfish Point (Oatley) and the opposite southern shore (Illawong), when the flow of the Georges River meets the incoming flood tide. Salinity in the river increases downstream, and is suitable for oysters from around Soily Bottom Point, at Lugarno. Overall, conditions on the Georges River were once ideal for oyster farming. The river also had the advantage that it was the only oyster growing area within the suburban area of the largest market, and close to transport, even in earlier years. Six families of oyster farmers worked from the head of Neverfail Bay just to the east of the Como Railway Bridge. Neverfail Bay was the base for working oyster leases both upstream and downstream on the Georges River. There was a smaller oyster farming site at the head of Jewfish Bay just outside the eastern boundary of Oatley Park. Modern-day oyster shell 'middens' and a few decaying remnants of oyster farming still existed at these locations in 2021. Oysters were cultivated on racks, or on artificially created shell banks or rock beds, that were installed on river mudbanks and, west of the Como rail bridge, on the rocks of shoreline leases. For many years, oysters were shipped to market in hessian sacks—each sack containing around 100 dozen oysters—from Oatley railway station, by electric rail parcel vans. There was also long-standing and lucrative criminal activity involving the theft of oysters from leases. In late 1934, shots were fired at oyster poachers by police patrolling the leases. Oyster farmers would at times patrol their leases themselves, at night, using boats fitted with small searchlights to scan their leases.
Decline and end of oyster farming The industry on the Georges River reached its productive peak in the 1970s. In the financial year 1976-1977, the river produced 2,563 tonnes of oysters, over a quarter of the record statewide production total of 9,375 tonnes. The local oyster farming industry survived opposition from Georges River Oyster Lease Protest Association (GROLPA), Kogarah Council and—to a lesser extent—Hurstville Council, reduced freshwater flows from the Woronora River, impacts of Tributyltin (TBT) anti-fouling compound for boats, invasive wild Pacific Oysters, increasing urbanisation, river silting, and increasing water turbidity and pollution.