Bytes: Sydney Suburbs, continued

Continuing an alphabetical look at Sydney's suburbs . . .

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CHIPPING NORTON:

Location:

Chipping Norton is located 27 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Liverpool

Name origin:

Chipping Norton was a farming area throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, named after an old English village by William Alexander Long. Long was born in Sydney in 1839, and travelled to England to study law, and later lived in Chipping Norton (Oxfordshire). He bought up a number former land grants in the area at the turn of the twentieth century and his homestead 'Chipping Norton'. The horse stud on part of his property produced many fine young horses. He died in 1915 and in 1919 the government bought his estate and subdivided it into farming blocks for soldiers returning from the First World War.

The story of the name is recorded in the school song of Chipping Norton Public School:

There was a man called William Long and horses were his game

He came to Chipping Norton before it had a name.

He built himself a homestead of solid sandstone

He didn’t want a wife.

He said he’d rather work alone.

Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton

We live by deeds not words.

He bred the finest horses and raised himself to fame

And then he said, “I’d better give this town of mine a name.”

He chose a tiny English town and christened it the same

And still today our Chipping Norton

Proudly bears the name.

Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton

We live by deeds not words.

And then in 1920, a very special year

The parents got together and said, “Now listen here,

It’s time we had a little school.

Our children need to learn.”

And so they set a stable up and there a school began.

Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton, Chipping Norton

We live by deeds not words.

About:

Thomas Moore, another prominent early settler, was granted waterfront land that is now part of the park. 'The Homestead' within the reserve grounds was built in the 1880s.

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As farming activities declined, the rich topsoil and underlying sand was mined. After 20 years of mining, the riverbanks were packed with dangerous pits and eroded banks. In 1977 the Chipping Norton Lakes Authority was set up to collect royalties from sand mining companies and plan and rehabilitate the area into parkland and lakes system. Today water quality is plagued by urban storm-water runoff and the Lake is reported as safe for swimming less than 50% of the time. Rather than a shallow narrow meandering river, there is a lake of 250-300 metres in width.

Gallery:

The Homestead

Chipping Norton Lake

Georges River at Chipping Norton, before sand mining.

Chipping Norton Lake

Beach and river, Strong Park, Chipping Norton Lake

Racing at Chipping Norton Lake

Fishing at Chipping Norton Lake, but Fisheries says not to eat the fish because of pollution and don’t go swimming, both because of pollution and shark sightings

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CHISWICK:

Location:

Chiswick (pronounced Chis-ick) is a suburb located in the Inner West of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, 9 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Canada Bay. Chiswick sits on the peninsula between Abbotsford Bay and Five Dock Bay, on the Parramatta River. It is surrounded by the suburbs of Abbotsford, Russell Lea and Drummoyne.

Name origin:

In the 1850s one Dr Fortescue owned an estate in this area which he named Chiswick after the village on the Thames, west of London. The suburb takes its name from his estate.

Parramatta River had been known as the 'Thames of the Antipodes' and other nearby suburbs were also named after Thames localities of Greenwich, Woolwich, Henley and Putney.

About:

According to the 2011 census, there were 2,470 residents in Chiswick.

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Chiswick is surrounded on three sides by the Parramatta River and Abbotsford and Five Dock Bays.

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Located on the Sydney Harbour foreshore just past where Sydney Harbour meets Parramatta River, surrounded by manicured parklands and playgrounds with quality waterfront developments.

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Some of the streets recall people associated with early Chiswick.

Fortescue Street immortalised the doctor who gave the suburb its name, and Chiswick Street, his estate;

Bortfield Drive honours Fred Bortfield, who was an alderman of the Drummoyne Council for eighteen years. Bortfield, a Drummoyne newsagent, served in both world wars as a sniper in Scots Guards. In the First World War he was awarded the Albert Cross, a Belgian decoration, for gallantry. He did not actually receive this award until sixty years after the action that merited it. In the Second World War he served as an officer in the RAAF.

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The suburb still retains an air of old world charm.

Gallery:

Regatta on Parramatta River from Searle's Monument c1925

Chiswick Ferry Wharf and apartments

Chiswick Ferry Wharf

Chambers Park

Restored shopfront, Blackwall Point Road

Before the advent of supermarkets and shopping centres, the corner store provided for the basic shopping needs of the community. Corner stores were often seen as not just a business but a focal point within the community. The corner store however has declined with the development of supermarkets, changing shopping hours and, more recently, convenience store outlets at service stations.

Tulley’s General Store, 92 Blackwall Point Road, Chiswick opened in 1928 and was operated by the family until the shop closed in 1987. James (Jim) Tulley, aged about 83, and his younger brother William (Bill), aged about 78, can be seen behind the counter. While the store no longer operates, the shop’s faded signs are still visible in Blackwall Point Road today.

Wymston, c 1903. Dr George Fortescue was amongst the first surgeons appointed to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He built Wymston at Chiswick, possibly in the early 1880s. He named his home after Whympston in Devon, the ancestral manor of the Fortescue family. After Dr Fortescue’s death from typhoid in 1885, the home had a succession of owners. In 1922 the Wymston estate site was taken over by the Co-operative Box Factory and the house appears to have been demolished about that time. The name of Wymston Parade at Chiswick is a reminder of this gracious old home.

Photograph taken around 1920 from the Nestlé factory chimney at Abbotsford and shows Chiswick and the Lysaght factory.

Cut into solid rock, the Chiswick Steps, 72 in number, originally led to a wharf which was serviced by ferries plying the Parramatta River. There was a ferry service to Chiswick from 1905 until 1928 when it was superseded with the introduction of a bus service. he wharf was damaged by fire in the 1940s and finally removed in 1958. Of the original 72 steps, only 62 remain today. The aerial photograph of the Chiswick Steps was taken in about 1980.

The Sydney Wiremill was established by Lysaght Bros & Co on the Parramatta River at Chiswick in 1884.

While a range of wire products were produced at the factory, there was a huge demand for wire netting for fences as rabbits had reached plague proportions in agricultural areas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Steamships brought the wire feed from Germany to Sydney where it was unloaded onto barges before being transported along the Parramatta River to the Wiremill. The raw materials were then pushed on trolleys along rails to the machines at the top of the ridge. The factory layout utilised gravity to assist in the transfer of materials through various processes and bringing the finished products back down to the wharf for dispatch. The wire making looms were powered by steam produced on the site prior to electricity being used.

Following the opening of the BHP Steelworks at Newcastle in 1915, Sydney Wiremill replaced imported steel rods with BHP steel. By 1925 the factory was consuming over 35,000 tonnes of steel annually. The size of the labour force reached a peak of 1,300 in the 1930s at a time when jobs were scarce.

The Sydney Wiremill became a subsidiary of BHP which operated it until December 1998 when the factory closed.

The Co-operative Box Company moved its operations from Balmain to a new mill at Chiswick in 1922. The company made wooden boxes for butter and was known locally as the ‘box factory’.

The Story of Drummoyne 1890 – 1940 described it as ‘one of the outstanding examples of secondary industry in our municipality’, noting that ‘the wages bill invariably exceeds £30,000 per annum, and as most of the employees reside in the municipality, it will be readily realised that the box company is a most important factor in the economic life of the community’.

Operations at the site were later taken over by Galleon Hardwoods Pty Ltd and in the late 1960s the site was redeveloped for home units.

In the photograph above from 1940, the old Gladesville Bridge can be seen in the background.

A later view of the box factory with the present bridge

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CHULLORA:

Location:

Chullora is located 15 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district and is a suburb of local government areas Canterbury-Bankstown Council and the Municipality of Strathfield. It is part of the Greater Western Sydney region.

Name origin:

Chullora is an Aboriginal word meaning 'flour'. I am not aware as to why the suburb is named that.

About:

The suburb of Chullora was originally part of the area known as Liberty Plains, which was land given to the first free settlers who arrived in Sydney Cove on 6 January 1793.

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In the 1950s, many immigrants from Europe were housed in the area. Once established, they moved to other parts of Sydney.

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During World War II, Chullora was selected as the site for a major wartime manufacturing plant. The site once occupied several hundred acres of land surrounded by Rookwood Cemetery, Brunker Road, the Hume Highway and Centenary Drive. The site was said to have been the largest secret manufacturing plant in Australia which was used for the production of military weapons, plane components, tanks, HE Bombs and ordnance. Over two thousand men and women were employed to work at the factory on a daily basis. During the war the factory produced components for 700 Beaufort, 380 Beaufighter and up to 50 Lincoln aircraft. Over 54 ACI tanks were built as well as 60 General Lee tanks that were adapted for use in the Australian Military, as were local jeeps in the 1970s. The factory also produced 81 cupola turrets for the British Matilda tanks.

An underground "bunker" and tunnel system is located on this site. It is directly under a block flats in Davidson Street and Marlene Crescent. The entrance to the "bunker" is by steel doors set in concrete into the hillside in a railway cutting which runs from alongside the railway line parallel to Marlene Crescent at a platform called the Railwelders and which leads under the block of flats. The doors to this "bunker" were welded up in the late 1980s. The steel doors are no longer visible, and the associated area has been back filled.

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Chullora is essentially an industrial area with many factories and warehouses, including Tip Top Bakeries and the OfficeMax Sydney warehouse at the Chullora Business Park. Chullora also houses the printing plants for Sydney newspapers and magazines. Fairfax Media print The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald. News Corp Australia prints The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

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A Big Bicycle is located outside the Chullora Recycling Centre and is a roadside attraction.

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Chullora is home to the largest postal distribution centre in the Southern Hemisphere, the Australia Post bulk parcel lodgement centre. The number of packages processed here is so large that it is estimated that one in two packages delivered between any location in Australia, and one in ninety worldwide travels through Chullora.

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The Chullora Railway Workshops and Electric Carriage Workshops previously serviced and repaired suburban and inter-urban trains, although this has now been outsourced to the private sector. Chullora does not have its own railway station.

Gallery: