South Western Sydney is a region of the city of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is situated in the south-west of the larger Sydney metropolitan area, and is part of the predominantly working class area of Greater Western Sydney. In the early 2010s, urban development has occurred in places like Camden and Campbelltown. Areas such as Leppington, spanning Liverpool, Camden and Campbelltown councils, had higher number of families. In 2004, Leppington was identified as part of Sydney's South West Growth Centre. Edmondson Park, being part of the South West Growth Centre, is also expected to see significant growth and development over the next 10 years.
There are a number of different boundaries and definitions for Sydney's South-West with majority of definitions including the suburbs within City of Liverpool as well as surrounding areas. This can also include the Macarthur region which is often referred to as 'Outer South-West', particularly referring to the local government area of City of Campbelltown as well as Camden Council and occasionally also the Wollondilly Shire. City of Canterbury-Bankstown is also often included in definitions of Sydney's South-West and usually referenced as being 'Inner South-West'. In the broadest sense, South-Western Sydney can also include Fairfield City Council as it is south of Prospect Reservoir even though geographically the council is west of Sydney CBD and not south-west.
Geographically, the region lies in the Cumberland Plain. The heritage-listed Warragamba Dam, the primary reservoir for water supply for Sydney, is located in the south western suburbs. The region features the Holsworthy Barracks, a large Australian Army reserve where training exercises frequently occur. Several institutions have 'South Western Sydney' in their title, including: South Western Sydney Local Health District, South Western Sydney Institute and South Western Sydney Clinical School. Englorie Park, in south-western Sydney, is the smallest suburb by area in the state of New South Wales.
History Indigenous Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity occurred in the Sydney metropolitan area from around 30,000 years ago. The Darug people lived in the area that was south western Sydney before European settlement regarded the region as rich in food from the river and forests. For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal people from the Gandangara tribe have lived in the Fairfield area. Clans of the Tharawal roamed over a wide area from Botany Bay to the Shoalhaven River and inland to Campbelltown. They lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, eating local foods (bush tucker) such as kangaroo, fish, yams and berries. They made tools out of stones, bones and shells to help them build bark shelters, canoes and possum-skin clothing.Liston, C: Campbelltown: The Bicentennial History, Allen & Unwin, 1988: p.1-2. The Holsworthy bushland still withholds many indigenous sites and has been referred to as "Sydney's Kakadu". There are more than 500 significant Tharawal sites in the area, including campsites, tool-making sites, and rock art. The art is mostly engravings of hands, boomerangs, animals, birds, and fish.
Menangle Park was originally home to the Tharawal people, and it was they who gave the name, transcribed as Manangle or Manhangle, to a small lagoon on the west bank of the Nepean River, which was important to the Tharawal both for its consistent water supply as well as the fish and yabbies that could be caught there.Liston, C: Campbelltown: The Bicentennial History, Allen & Unwin, 1988: pp. 1–2. In a rock art site called Bull Cave near Campbelltown, the Dharug people drew a number of cattle with pronounced horns. The Dharug cowpasture tribes described the cattle to British explorers and in 1795 the British found a herd of around 60 cattle grazing in the area now known as Camden.Listo, C: Campbelltown: The Bicentennial History, Allen & Unwin, 1988: pp. 1–4.
Colonial era
In February 1793, the Auburn area was established as the first free-agricultural settlement thanks to Governor Phillip's repeated applications to the British government for free settlers.J Henniker Heaton, Australian Dictionary of Dates and Men of the Time, Sydney, 1873 In 1795, Matthew Flinders and George Bass explored up the Georges River for about 20 miles beyond what had been previously surveyed, and reported favourably to Governor John Hunter of the land on its banks. The earliest recorded white settlement in the Fairfield district is described in William Bradley's Journal where he noted an expedition from Rose Hill to Prospect Creek to determine whether Prospect Creek led to Botany Bay. In 1789, Governor Arthur Phillip probed the country between Salt Pan Creek beginning at Prospect Creek. The District of Bankstown was named by Governor Hunter in 1797 in honour of botanist Sir Joseph Banks. The area remained very rural until residential and suburban development followed the development of the Bankstown railway line with the passing of the Marrickville to Burwood Road Railway Act by the NSW Parliament in 1890, extending the rail line from Marrickville Station (later Sydenham Station) to Burwood Road (later Belmore Station) by 1895.
In 1798, First Fleet Captain George Johnston received a land grant and constructed his first home located near Prospect Creek, close to Henry Lawson Drive and Beatty Parade. The first incursions and eventual land grants in the area by Europeans led to increasing tensions, culminating in a confrontation between Europeans and a group of Aboriginal people led by Tedbury, the son of Pemulwuy, in what is now Punchbowl in 1809. However, following Tedbury's death in 1810, resistance to European settlement generally ended.
In the 1800s, the area around Prestons was known as "Cross Roads". The name appears to originate from 1821, when a notice published by John Oxley, the Surveyor General of New South Wales stated that "this Cross Road from Windsor ends in the new Bringelly Road". In 1800, just beside Prospect Creek, Lieutenant John Shortland from the First Fleet acquired an initial grant of over the northern part of Lansdowne Reserve which he increased to . In 1848, German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and politician Sir Henry Parkes cooled their feet in Prospect Creek in Carramar. Very early relations with British settlers were cordial but as farmers started clearing and fencing the land affecting food resources in the area, clashes between the groups arose until 1816 when a number of indigenous people were massacred and the remainder retreated from direct conflict with the settlers.
In 1801, Governor King ordered soldiers to fire on the aborigines to keep them from settler's properties. By 1815, Governor Macquarie declared a state of open warfare against aborigines in the Georges River area and forbade them carrying weapons within a mile of any British settlement. Ultimately, the British prevailed. The Liverpool Offtake Reservoir was constructed in 1890 to supply the township of Liverpool, as part of the Upper Nepean Scheme. The Church of the Holy Innocents was opened in 1850 by William Munro. Alexander Riley (1778–1833) was a merchant and pastoralist who in 1809 was granted of land and called his estate Raby. In March 1895, a petition was submitted to the NSW Colonial Government by 109 residents of the Bankstown area, requesting the establishment of the "Municipal District of Bankstown" under the Municipalities Act, 1867. On 19 January 1898, the Camden Municipal Council proposed to establish a cottage hospital for the municipality.
Early 20th century
In the first half of the 20th century, venues such as Latty's Pleasure Grounds, the Butterfly Hall, and Hollywood Park at Lansvale were popular among tourists due to the area's rural feel, so popular in fact that the first games of Rugby League football in Australia, in early 1908, were trial games that took place at Latty's Pleasure Grounds. Liverpool Hospital was founded on a portion of land beside the Georges River, making it the second oldest hospital in Australia.Raszewski, C. et al. (2013). 'The History of Liverpool Hospital: From early settlement to 1993'. The Liverpool Historical Society, Liverpool City Library and Liverpool Health Service. Hammondville was originally a settlement for destitute families during the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, Kentlyn became something of a shantytown for families who had lost their homes. During World War II, Bankstown Airport was established as a key strategic air base to support the war effort and the control of Bankstown Airport was handed to US Forces. Also during the war, Bass Hill was the location for a small transmitting station that was owned and operated by the RAAF. It was located on the corner of Manuka Crescent & Johnston Road.Transmission Station Royal Australian Air Force
In World War II, there was a soldiers' settlement at Milperra which consisted mostly of poultry and horticultural enterprises. In 1942 a command bunker (Sydney Air Defence Headquarters) of semi underground construction was established in Bankstown. The primary use of the Sydney Air Defence Headquarters was the location, tracking and interception of all planes in the eastern area of the South West Pacific. From 1948 to 1955 workers camps were set up at Potts Hill to accommodate the European migrant workers who were indentured from the many displaced persons brought to Australia after World War II. The Australian Legion of Ex-Servicemen and Women sponsored the mass production of housing at Panania beginning from 1946 with the construction of 34 houses. During World War II, Picnic Point National Park was the location of a remote receiving station and operations bunker that was owned and operated by the RAAF.Bankstown Remote Receiving Building, during WW2 In October 1944, the Royal Navy (United Kingdom) opened a hospital (Royal Naval Hospital, Herne Bay) at Riverwood to treat wounded members of the British Pacific Fleet in the vacated buildings.Book of Sydney Suburbs, Frances Pollon (Angus and robertson) 1990, page 222
Contemporary period
Until the 1950s, Liverpool was still a satellite town with an agricultural economy based on poultry farming and market gardening. However the urban sprawl of Sydney across the Cumberland Plain soon reached Liverpool, and it became an outer suburb of metropolitan Sydney with a strong working-class presence and manufacturing facilities.The Book of Sydney Suburbs, Compiled by Frances Pollon, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, p.155, At the time of its opening by the mayor R. J. Schofield on 26 September 1958, the Campsie Library was reputed to be the largest municipal library in Sydney. Campbelltown was designated in the early 1960s as a satellite city by the New South Wales Planning Authority, and a regional capital for the south west of Sydney.The Book of Sydney Suburbs, Frances Pollon, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, p. 45, . The Milperra College of Advanced Education was established in 1974, bringing tertiary education to south-western Sydney, where it then became the Bankstown campus of Western Sydney University in 1989. In January 1975, tenders for the first homes in the Housing Commission's "Kentlyn" subdivision were called but the name Airds was not approved until May 1976.