FAIRFIELD, NEW SOUTH WALES

'Fairfield' is a western suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Fairfield is located 29 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the City of Fairfield. Fairfield is also partly in the local government area of the City of Holroyd. The postcode is 2165.

Contents

Commercial area

Little Iraq

Transport

Schools

Environment

History

Aboriginal culture

European settlement

Population

Demographics

Culture

Politics

References

External links

Commercial area

Fairfield supports a mixture of commercial and residential developments. Fairfield has three major shopping malls: Fairfield Forum, Neeta City and Fairfield Chase. There has been significant development in Neeta city with greater commercial opportunities. Fairfield's culturally diverse population is reflected in multicultural local businesses such as over twenty different types of cafés and restaurants that include Assyrian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Italian, Spanish and Thai.

Little Iraq

Fairfield's large Iraqi Assyrian and Iraqi Arab community has had the media describe the suburb as "Little Iraq". More Iraqi/Assyrian businesses have opened in Fairfield, mostly around Ware Street. Iraqi/Assyrian businesses include everything from jewellery shops to restaurants, making the area favourite entertainment and shopping hotspot for the Iraqi/Assyrian community.
Sydney's Iraqi community congregated in Fairfield to celebrate Iraq qualifying for the Asian Soccer Cup finals in 2007. More than 7000 people joined in street celebrations around Fairfield on Sunday 29th July, 2007 after Iraq won the Asian Cup finals.

Transport

Fairfield also has a train station on the CityRail network operating on the Cumberland Line and the South line. Trains run frequently from Fairfield to Campbelltown and the City Circle. There are exactly two trains a day from Fairfield directly to Blacktown. Fairfield also has many bus services via Transit First, and Westbus.

Schools

Public Schools in Fairfield include: Fairfield Public School, Fairfield High School. Catholic Schools are: Patrician Brothers' College and Our Lady of the Rosary Primary School. Patrician Brothers' Primary School was also previously located in Fairfield but closed in 2007.

Environment

Much of the original bushland cover within the City has been cleared through past land management practices. A few small areas of this original bushland remain, including examples of Cumberland Plain vegetation, which is listed under the Threatened Species Conservation Act.
Eight creeks, 80 kilometres in length, have their headwaters in Fairfield City and flow into the Georges River and Hawkesbury Nepean catchments. The impact of development over the past 50 years has resulted in severe degradation of the natural habitat in the creek banks and water quality has been assessed as very poor in recent years. Strategies are being implemented so that this trend is being reversed.
Air quality in the City is heavily impacted upon by an insufficiently integrated public transport system, creating an over reliance upon private vehicles for moving people and freight.

History

Captain John Horsley bought the land and named the area Fairfield in honour of his family estate in Somerset, in the UK.

Aboriginal culture

For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal-Gandangara tribe have lived in the area.

European settlement

Frenchman Gabriel Louis Marie Huon de Kerrileu who was a soldier in the NSW Corp received a grant of 100 acres in 1807, in this area which he called 'Castel Paul'. The land was sold to Captain John Horsley in 1840. Development began in the mid 19th century supported by railway construction in 1856. At the turn of the century the area had a population of 2,500 people and with fertile soils, produced crops for distribution in Sydney.
Rapid population increase after World War II saw the settlement of many ex-service men and European migrants. Large scale Housing Commission development in the 1950s swelled the population to 38,000. By 1979, the population had reached 120,000 and the City was becoming one of the larger Local Government Areas in NSW.

Population

Demographics

A large portion of Fairfield's residents are migrants and their descendants, notably from former Yugoslavia and more recently from Cambodia, Laos and especially Vietnam, the latter concentrated around the suburb of Cabramatta. Large Assyrian, African, Italian and Latino populations also reside in Fairfield and surrounding suburbs such as Bossley Park, Wetherill Park and Smithfield.
Fairfield City is home to approximately 182,000 people. The City of Fairfield is Australia's fifth largest city and the third largest in the Sydney metropolitan area (after Blacktown and Sutherland). While Fairfield City has a comparatively young population with many young families, the greatest growth is occurring in the number of older residents, those aged 65 years or more.

Culture

Fairfield has 2 major local newspapers, The Fairfield Advance and the Fairfield Champion. Fairfield Advance and Fairfield Champion is issued every Wednesday.

Politics

Fairfield is led by Fairfield City Council, with Nick Lalich as Mayor, Joseph Tripodi as State MP, and Chris Bowen and Julia Irwin as Federal MPs for the seats of Prospect and Fowler respectively.

References

★ ''The Book of Sydney Suburbs'', Compiled by Frances Pollen, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, Published in Australia ISBN 0-207-14495-8

External links

★ Fairfied City Official Site

★ 2001 Census Information.

★ Fairfield Advance Local Newspaper