On the upper reaches of Sydney Harbour, there’s a tree-fringed suburb with riverside views within walking distance of one of Australia’s largest business and retail districts and historic buildings a stone’s throw away.
Half an hour from Sydney’s CBD and soon to have a fancy new tram rolling through it, Camellia might sound flowery but it’s had a pungent past.
Planning big wigs are now keen on it becoming a new home hotspot, but fear the neighbourhood has such a grim and filthy background that the only way to persuade people to move in will be to rename it.
“There’s nothing nice about it,” said one.
The concept is one of a series of demands from the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue, which today launched its strategy for the so-called “central city”, an area of 1.5 million people that surrounds Parramatta in western Sydney.
The Dialogue, a group that brings together public and private sector bodies to focus on the issues facing the city’s west, also said $5 billion should be ploughed into a new Metro line from the CBD to Parramatta.
It also wants planning to begin on a north-south rail line and for broadcaster SBS to move its headquarters to the area.
Speaking to news.com.au, the Dialogue’s chairman Christopher Brown said it was stating the “bleeding obvious” that SBS should up sticks from its current home in the ritzy north shore to one of the most multicultural parts of Sydney.
He also said a “city deal” should be created for the Parramatta and Sydney Olympic Park precinct, similar to one already in place for the area around the new Western Sydney Airport.
Based on a similar concept in Britain, it brings a swath of government bodies and other stakeholders together.
NOTHING NICE ABOUT CAMELLIA
The Dialogue has predicted the central city’s population will grow to 2.1 million by 2036, and those extra 600,000 people — about the population of the Gold Coast — will need to live somewhere.
However, there are concerns few will want to live in Camellia, a suburb on the southern shore of the Parramatta River, unless something drastic changes.
That’s despite it lying next to the iconic Rosehill Racecourse, just down the road from the historic Elizabeth and Experiment farms and boasting its own railway station. The future Parramatta light rail will also swing through the suburb on its way between Westmead and Carlingford.
But Mr Brown said while the suburb might be named after a flower, it has a distinctly stinky stigma due to the suburb’s heavy industrial and polluted past.
“There’s the old Shell oil refinery, the old James Hardie’s asbestos factory. There’s nothing nice about it,” he told news.com.au.
“But Camellia is also on the edge of the Parramatta CBD and is next to Rosehill Gardens Racecourse where people have been backing a winner for 100 years.”
The Dialogue has suggested splitting Camellia in two. The eastern portion, where the pollution and stains from the Clyde Oil Refinery which closed in 2012 still linger, would remain industrial. Indeed, a major fuel terminal operates to this day as well as a waste transfer and recycling plant.
However, over time, it would transition into a “green tech” park.
“As fuel markets and waste management evolve over time, it would transform from the most degraded part of Sydney into a home for eco-fuel and sustainable energy research and production,” the report said.
The western portion of Camellia would become “an ambitious mixed use riverfront precinct” with scores of housing. To sweeten the pill of moving to a former industrial area, this section would be renamed “Rosehill Gardens” after the racecourse.
Why not, said Mr Brown? After all, it’s happened before.
“Look what we’ve done in turning around Homebush, which includes Sydney Olympic Park. That was an abattoir and an armaments factory with an industrial riverbank that has now been remediated and populated.
“The same happened at Rhodes, Camellia is the last part.”
As well as the multi-billion Metro West line, that is proposed to connect the city to Parramatta via Sydney Olympic Park, Mr Brown said planning should start on a north-south rail link that would connect Kogarah in the St George region with the Hills District via Parramatta.
“All of Sydney is beset by a lack of north south connections, we’ve had 200 years of everything being centred on Martin Place (in the Sydney CBD) and that can’t go on.”
An underground rail link between Parramatta and Epping, the route of which a new line would closely follow, has been planned for, announced, scrapped and re-announced many times up to around 2012.
“The Epping to Parramatta line should have happened and we need to fix that mistake now.”
MOVE SBS
Mr Brown also called on SBS to move from its current home in Artarmon on Sydney’s north shore to the central city area where 70 per cent of residents were either born overseas themselves or their parents were.
“You can’t have the national multicultural broadcaster in one of the most monoculture suburbs in Australia.
“Moving SBS to the middle of multicultural Sydney is bleeding obvious. Artarmon doesn’t need SBS — Bankstown does.”
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