The University crossed City Road in the mid-twentieth century
and took its place in Darlington. It has
slowly swallowed up the residential housing within the suburb and replaced it
with sports centres and faculties of Engineering, Business and Economics. As
time went by, the town houses of Darlington
were bulldozed but there remains one final strip of houses standing in the way
of the University’s domination of North West Darlington.
Darlington Road
is the remaining stronghold of houses within the Darlington
campus and is surely feeling like a veritable allusion to the military term:
“Divide and conquer.”
Long-term Darlington
Road resident, Terry Laws, has, for the last 10
years, repeatedly rejected offers from Sydney Uni to buy his house. His father
had lived in the property for over 50 years and passed away last year, but Mr
Laws has thus far refused to sell the property and has no intention to do so.
The University’s ‘Campus 2010’ expansion plan is already
underway, which will see the development of 11 new buildings on the Darlington
Campus, varying from two to seven storeys in height. The development will hem
in the existing public school, which is built upon university grounds.
An open secret of the University’s Eastern expansion is
that, when the houses that stood upon the sight were bulldozed, no asbestos was
removed from the site, but was simply buried along with other landfill.
Sydney
University has also
hinted at plans to expand even further. When the North
Eveleigh site is released to tender by the Redfern Waterloo
Association, Sydney Uni will be one of the first to pounce on the prime piece
of real estate. This may be counter to the RWA plans to have the area primarily
developed to produce more affordable housing in the area, but, as another
cliché goes, “money talks”. If this expansion goes ahead then it would be
likely that it is only a matter of time before the private housing between the North Eveleigh site and the existing campus would be
swallowed up too.
Darlington locals are
seeking more open dialogue with the University to express their concerns about
future plans for development. Sydney University’s proposal to build a parkland campus at Callan Park
to complement its College of the Arts has upset many of the local residents
there, and with Darlington locals already
furious with the Uni’s redevelopment, it appears to be repeating its mistakes.
This reverberated around when the University failed to be represented at City
of Sydney Community Urban Design Workshop that
was focused on Darlington.
One very irate Abercrombie
Street resident, Maurice, has grown increasingly forlorn
at the University’s relentless plans for expansion into Darlington, describing
it as the worst environmental thug in the area, “shifting all the rubbish it
doesn’t want onto Darlington,” he said.
“Cyclone fencing, demountable sheds, pot-holed streets,
containers, diesel generators in front of terrace houses, metal-clad buildings
looking like Stalag 13 and endless jack hammering and disturbance at all hours
of the day and night,” are just some of the headaches he has had to tolerate.
And although Darlington
residents may feel as though they are being treated with contempt by the
University, they will have to get used to the beast it has become, and prepare
for the Leviathan it will be in the future.
Photo: Ali Blogg – The old Darlington
School hemmed in by Sydney University
Source:
South Sydney Herald April 2008 – www.southsydneyherald.com.au