If you catch the train to Green Square today you step out into glass towers, a sunken library, a beach-style pool and a brand-new high street. It's hard to picture that you're standing on what was a swamp, then a mill pond, then a woolwash dam, then a pony track, then a car factory, then a Navy store, and that for about 150 years this was one of the smelliest, dirtiest corners of Sydney. Zetland has had more lives than most suburbs, and plenty of them weren't pretty.
This is the story of how a patch of Gadigal wetland, four kilometres south of the city, went from sandhills and waterbirds to tanneries, wool scourers, a racecourse, the Mini, an incinerator the locals called the "Zetland Monster", and finally one of the biggest urban renewal jobs in the country.
Gadigal Country – Sandhills, Swamps and Waterbirds
Long before anyone thought of drawing a street grid here, this was Gadigal Country. The City of Sydney's history of the area describes a system of sand dune wetlands that stretched across what we now call Green Square, with a rich mix of plants and animals. Aboriginal people would have gathered to forage around the body of water that later became known as the Waterloo Swamp. The apartments on Gadigal Avenue sit right in the middle of where that swamp used to be.
The City's park history for Joynton Park says the Waterloo Swamp was part of a chain of wetlands running from Botany Bay north to Redfern. When the City Historian, Lisa Murray, went looking for a possible Aboriginal name for the area in 2014, she painted a picture of it: Sheas Creek and the swamp ringing with oyster catchers, water hens, teal, bitterns, quail, ducks, bronze-winged pigeons, brolgas and black swans, with brush wallabies, echidnas and bandicoots in the undergrowth and gliders and possums in the trees at night. Aboriginal people would have hunted many of these birds and animals and collected the eggs of the waterbirds. Two of the names she put forward were Badu, the Sydney language word for water, and Yurungi, wild duck, both recorded by First Fleet writers.
The water from these swamps drained away south-west into Sheas Creek, then into the Cooks River and Botany Bay. In 1896, while workers were digging out Sheas Creek for the Alexandra Canal, they turned up dugong bones, Aboriginal stone hatchets and the remains of an ancient forest in the estuarine clay below low tide level. Ron Ringer's Dictionary of Sydney entry on the canal says the Australian Museum's curator, Robert Etheridge, found the dugong had been butchered with a blunt cutting or chopping tool. It's one of the best bits of evidence for how long Aboriginal people have lived around these waters.
Mills, Convicts and the Waterloo Estate
The same water that fed the swamp caught the eye of the early colonists. The City of Sydney's house history for 22 Gadigal Avenue says the first water mill went up in 1815 to make use of the swamp.
In 1823 the Crown granted 1,400 acres here to William Hutchinson. His story is a very Sydney one. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in 1796 for theft, had it changed to transportation, and arrived in 1799. He was caught stealing again and sent to Norfolk Island, where he worked his way up to superintendent of convicts. Governor Macquarie then made him principal superintendent of convicts and public works in Sydney in 1814. In 1820, with Samuel Terry, he was part owner of the Waterloo flour mill. Wikipedia's Waterloo article talks about the "Lachlan and Waterloo Flour Mills" and says the mill was in what's now Kensington.
Another former convict, Daniel Cooper, became a partner in Hutchinson, Terry & Co. (the Waterloo Company) in 1821. The ADB says Cooper had been transported for life in 1815 for stealing, arrived in January 1816, and was fully pardoned by 1821. In 1825 Cooper and Solomon Levey became the sole owners of the company, which people then knew as Cooper & Levey. The Dictionary of Sydney's record for the Waterloo Estate shows Cooper owning it from 1825 until his death in 1853, when it passed to Daniel Cooper junior. Wikipedia says he was Cooper's nephew and the first Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly. The estate wasn't carved up until the 1880s.
That long ownership is the key to the whole area. The City's Green Square infrastructure plan says that for most of the 19th century almost all of Alexandria, Beaconsfield, Waterloo, Zetland and Rosebery belonged to the Coopers. Lisa Murray notes that the Cooper Estate's leases shaped how the district grew, and that the land for Waterloo Town Hall, Alexandria Town Hall and South Sydney Hospital was all donated by the estate.
Where the Name Zetland Comes From
Zetland is an old spelling of Shetland, but the suburb didn't get its name from the islands. It got it from a racing stable.
In 1874 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Hercules Robinson, set up a big horse training stable here called Zetland Lodge. It stood back from where Bourke and Elizabeth Streets meet. Lisa Murray's 2013 report on the name says Elizabeth Street was supposedly extended out to Zetland Lodge because the Governor wanted it, and was declared a main road so the colonial government had to keep it up.
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Robinson was mad about racing. He was patron of the Australian Jockey Club at Randwick, the Northern Jockey Club and the Hawkesbury Racing Club. He hired the trainer Thomas Lamond to run Zetland Lodge, and the winners came thick and fast: Fitz Yattendon, Kingsborough, St Leger, Hyperion and Habena. His colours were the "Zetland" or "Aske Hall" spots, red spots on white. When his daughter Nora married in 1878, her travelling dress was done in her father's racing colours.
So why "Zetland"? The Earl of Zetland, Thomas Dundas, was a huge figure in English racing and freemasonry. Wikipedia says he was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England from 1844 to 1870, a senior member of the Jockey Club, and won the Derby and St Leger with his horse Voltigeur in 1850. He died at Aske Hall in Yorkshire, the name that went on Robinson's racing spots. Exactly how he was connected to Robinson depends on who you read (more on that below).
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When Robinson left to become Governor of New Zealand in 1878, he handed Zetland Lodge over to Thomas Lamond. Lamond made it one of the best-known stables in Sydney. He trained four Sydney Cup winners and the 1881 Melbourne Cup winner, Zulu. He also sat on Waterloo Council for 21 years, from 1887 to 1907, and was mayor four times. When he died in 1912, aged 72, Zetland Lodge was the oldest racing stable in metropolitan Sydney, and his son Stanley had taken over.
The name spread from the stable to the streets. In 1885 William Cooper decided to subdivide the land around Zetland Lodge. The "Zetland Estate" first went up for auction on 13 June 1885, with blocks fronting Bourke Street and Botany Road that ran right back to the dam of Geddes Brothers' woolwashing works. Waterloo Council dedicated the new streets, Merton, Dundas, Portman and Tilford, in August 1885. The Zetland Hotel opened in 1886, and by 1895 people were just calling the area "Zetland". It took a long time to become official, though. The Geographical Names Board only formally assigned Zetland as a suburb on 19 July 1996.
The Smelliest Corner of Sydney – Tanneries, Wool Scourers and Brickworks
The swamps that made the land hard to build houses on made it perfect for industry. Mills needed water power, wool washers needed water to scour fleeces, and everyone needed somewhere to get rid of their waste.
Ron Ringer's Dictionary of Sydney entry on Sheas Creek explains the push. The Slaughter House Act of 1849 made all the "noxious trades" move more than a mile (1.6 kilometres) out of the city. That sent brickmakers, tanners, wool washers and chemical works out to places like St Peters, Alexandria and Waterloo. He doesn't mince words: "the stench created by industrial processes must have been truly appalling." Waste was got rid of the simple way, by letting it run into Sheas Creek.
The City's Green Square plan says that by the 1850s the Cooper Estate had become an industrial suburb, with brickworks, candle and soap factories, tanneries, breweries and wool washing firms, as well as schools and churches. The industries drank so much water that by 1869 the wetlands were radically changed. The Waterloo Mills Woolwashing Establishment was big enough to make the Australian Town and Country Journal in 1877. On top of the factory waste, from 1882 to 1916 the southern outfall sewer carried the southern suburbs' sewage from Surry Hills down to a sewage farm at the mouth of the Cooks River, and part of it was an open channel.
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The area also had a strong Chinese presence. The Green Square plan notes that the streets around Retreat Street in Alexandria have had Chinese residents since at least the 1870s, that the district had the biggest concentration of Chinese market gardeners in Sydney in the 1880s and early 1900s, and that the Chinese Temple in Retreat Street was built in 1909. There was also a large dairy that supplied milk to much of the eastern suburbs. The City's Transform history walk, put together by the City Historian, adds clairvoyants, shopkeepers and factory workers to the mix, and promises to tell you "why the area used to smell so bad".
When the Cooper Estate was broken up, big blocks of land came free for purpose-built factories. Alexandria Council boasted in 1943 that it had "not less than 550 factories", making it "the largest industrial municipality in Australia", and called itself the "Birmingham of Australia". The Green Square plan puts the workforce at 22,238. Minties, Jaffas, Akubra hats and Kooka ovens all came out of factories in the Green Square area.
Glass, Water Heaters and More
One of the biggest names was Australian Glass Manufacturers on South Dowling Street, Waterloo. The City's Sydney Barani site says glass was one of South Sydney's main industries by the late 19th century, and that by the 1920s AGM had a monopoly on glassmaking in Sydney. Its offshoot, Crown Crystal Glass, was formed in 1926 and made everything from crystal to Pyrex. By the late 1930s the company was turning out 9,634 different kinds of bottles and containers. Many Aboriginal people worked in the factories of South Sydney, including AGM. When the Green Square area was first rezoned in 1999, the former "ACI" site in Waterloo, now Crown Square, was one of the two biggest single sites, along with Victoria Park.
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Rheem was another. Rheem's own company history says the American drum maker began making drums in Australia in 1937 and built its first Australian water heater at Waterloo in 1939. The Housing Industry Association adds that the Waterloo plant made 44-gallon steel drums for the oil industry.
Sheas Creek Becomes the Alexandra Canal
All that water, and all that muck, flowed down Sheas Creek. In the 1880s the government decided to turn the creek into a proper canal, so barges could carry coal, blue metal and building materials, and so the swamps could be drained for more industry. Dredging started in 1887 where Sheas Creek met the Cooks River, and a lot of the digging was done by unemployed men on relief work during the 1890s depression. The canal was finished in 1905, but it silted up almost as soon as it opened, it was too shallow for big boats, and you had to time the tides. Ringer calls it a "white elephant". In 1912 work stopped altogether.
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The canal is still a drain for this whole area. The Dictionary of Sydney says rainwater runoff from Newtown, Redfern, Erskineville, Alexandria and Zetland all ends up in it, and many people see it as Australia's most polluted stretch of waterway. I'll come back to that in the section on contamination.
Victoria Park Racecourse – The "VP"
The biggest change to the swamp came from one man: James Joynton Smith. According to the ADB, he was born in London in 1858, ran away to sea as a boy, did well running hotels in New Zealand, and came to Sydney around 1890. He went on to own the Carlton Hotel in the city, the Imperial at Mount Victoria and the Carrington at Katoomba. He was Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1918, sat in the Legislative Council, started Smith's Weekly in 1919, backed Sydney's first radio station, and was president of the NSW Rugby League from 1910 to 1928. The City's history notes he made his fortune from "the pastimes of the people". It also describes him as "moustached with one glass eye and a monocle".
The City's house history says Smith bought the swampy land in 1904. Its bounds were Epsom Road, Joynton Avenue, South Dowling Street and what later became O'Dea Avenue. The Joynton Park history says it was drained in 1906 by cutting a trench through to Sheas Creek, which let the water run off to Botany Bay and left two to three metres of natural peat surrounded by sandhills. On 15 January 1908 Smith opened Victoria Park Racecourse.
Pony racing was the big draw. The races had bigger fields and shorter distances than the club courses, which meant closer finishes and better odds for punters. The Dictionary of Sydney says proprietary courses like this one, and others at Kensington, Rosebery, Ascot and Canterbury, meant Sydneysiders could go to the races almost any day of the week. Victoria Park had a reputation as the best of them. The house history says some Randwick trainers actually preferred to stable and work their horses at the VP. The ADB says it was the first course in Australia to give women their own retiring rooms, and the City says it used a totalisator, a machine that worked out the betting pool, instead of leaving it to the bookies.
The VP wasn't just for horses. Wikipedia says a clay and cinder track 1.81 kilometres long was laid around the course in 1908 for car and motorbike racing. The first motor meeting, on 6 October 1908, had six horse races followed by a car race, the One Hundred Guinea Handicap. Fred Howarth won the final in a Sizaire-Naudin two days later, after the horse races ran late. In 1909 Colin Defries got a Wright Model A aeroplane, "The Stella", off the ground here for about 110 metres at around four and a half metres up. The City calls it one of Australia's earliest powered flights, and Wikipedia says Australian aviation historians credit Defries with the first aeroplane flight in Australia.
The racing ended with the Second World War. The house history says the last races were held in 1942, when the military took the course over. It reopened for horse training in 1945, but proprietary racing had been banned by then, so there were no more race days. Part of the old grandstand had a second life as the balcony of Smith's Carrington Hotel in Katoomba. The three-storey totalisator building, "the Tote", is the only part of the racecourse still standing on Joynton Avenue. Joynton Smith died at Coogee in 1943.
Royal South Sydney Hospital
Joynton Smith's other big local project was a hospital. Wikipedia says locals started raising money for a South Sydney hospital in 1908 and made Smith their provisional president. A 25-bed public hospital was built from 1912 and opened in 1913. It became "Royal" in 1917 and grew to 110 beds the next year. The ADB calls it Smith's favourite charity and says he was a director until he died. The land came from the Cooper Estate.
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New brick buildings went up in 1976 and the hospital moved into rehabilitation, orthopaedics and community health. In 1991 it merged with the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, and the general services, including the emergency department, were run down. Wikipedia says that last part was controversial. The hospital closed for good in 2003 and the site went to South Sydney Council, later the City of Sydney. It sat empty for years. The old nurses' quarters reopened as the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre in May 2018, and Matron Ruby Grant Park now sits on the old hospital grounds.
The Car Plant – Morris, Austin, the Mini and the P76
After the war, the empty racecourse was bought by Lord Nuffield, the head of Morris Motors. The City's house history puts the purchase in 1948, while Wikipedia says 1947. Nuffield wanted to use most of the land for a car factory and sell the rest for a mix of housing and industry. That was the first of the post-war housing fights here: the new Cumberland County Council had zoned the area for industry only, so the City Council knocked back the housing on its advice. The industrial subdivision was approved on 10 December 1951 and finalised in 1952, with Lot 12 becoming the car plant.
Wikipedia's BMC Australia article says Nuffield Australia opened its new 57-acre assembly plant in March 1950, building Morris Minors and Morris Oxfords from kits shipped out from England. In 1954 Nuffield and Austin merged into the British Motor Corporation (Australia), and Victoria Park became the company's head office, design centre and main factory. The house history gives the workforce as about 150 when the plant started, around 4,000 by the mid-1960s, and between 5,000 and 5,500 at its peak. The company changed its name to British Leyland Motor Corporation by 1969, and to Leyland Australia in 1972.
The BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group's reference book describes a whole industrial town on the old track. The CKD plant unpacked the kits from England and assembled, painted and trimmed the cars. The Unit Plant made engines, gearboxes and axles, and had its own apprentice school. Fisher & Ludlow ran a press shop with presses of up to 900 tons, and the newer Car Assembly Building was said to be one of the most modern in the world. In 1968 a new administration building opened on the eastern side, and the plant's official address moved from Joynton Avenue, Zetland, to South Dowling Street, Waterloo.
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Then came the Mini. The Heritage Group's MiniWorld book says the Morris 850 was announced in the papers on 23 March 1961, with the Cooper following in 1963, the van in 1964 and the Moke in 1966. BMC Australia wasn't sure Australians would buy it at all. Its product engineer worried that Aussies started out with a big second-hand "bomb" rather than a small car, and thought the best hope was the second-car market. It's a funny thing to read now, given how many Minis ended up on Sydney roads. Museums Victoria says the Australian Mini was built at Zetland from 1961 to 1974.
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The last big car to come out of Zetland was the Leyland P76. The City's Joynton Park history lists Morris, Austin and Wolseley cars and "the famous Leyland P76" among the plant's products. Wikipedia says the P76 won Wheels Car of the Year for 1973, but it had bad luck. Inflation was rising, industrial action was hitting both the parts makers and the Zetland plant, and the car came out just as the 1973 oil crisis killed demand for big cars. Leyland shut the plant in late 1974 (sources give October, December or simply 1975), and Mini and Moke production moved to Enfield.
The Navy Moves In
Once Leyland had gone, the Royal Australian Navy took over the site. The house history says there were eight general factory buildings and an office block for about 450 staff. The Navy used most of them as stores that held everything from ship propellers and generators to frozen food and pencils, though not explosives or missiles. About 800 people, mostly civilians, worked there until 1990, when things began to wind down. By 1996 the Navy had gone.
The Problems – Floods, Smoke and Poisoned Ground
None of this came without a price. By the time people started talking seriously about housing at Zetland, the place had three big problems: it flooded, the air was bad, and the ground and water were contaminated.
Flooding
You can drain a swamp, but the water still wants to go somewhere. The City's 2015 Green Square infrastructure plan says that since early colonial times the wetlands and creeks had held back development, and parts of Green Square sit on a floodplain where heavy rain causes serious flooding. The area is in the Alexandra Canal catchment, the biggest in the City of Sydney. It covers 1,141 hectares, or 43 per cent of the City's land, from Moore Park and Surry Hills right down through Zetland. In big storms the old pipes overflow and the water runs along the streets and pools in the low spots.
The fix was a 2.5-kilometre trunk stormwater drain from Link Road, Zetland, to the Alexandra Canal, running through the new town centre. The City and Sydney Water signed a deal to build it together in November 2013. The 2015 plan was blunt: without it, development in the town centre "could be severely hindered". The aim was to cut dangerous flooding on Joynton Avenue and Botany Road, with the drain due to be running by December 2017.
The "Zetland Monster"
Just as industry was fading, Zetland got a new neighbour it never asked for. Redfern News tells the story. In 1965 Waverley and Woollahra councils applied to build a rubbish incinerator in Botany Road, Waterloo. The City of Sydney said no, but in 1966 the Land and Valuation Court approved it. It was built over the filled-in Waterloo Dam, right next to Zetland's houses. The City's Green Square plan says its huge chimney poured out "stench, pollution and particle fallout round the clock". Locals called it the "Zetland Monster".
Residents were protesting within a year of it opening. In 1974 the State Pollution Control Commission ordered it shut, but it was overhauled and reopened in July 1976. In 1989 tests found dioxins in the emissions 30 to 60 times over world standards, and in 1992 further tests found levels up to 153 times over. Greenpeace blockaded it for a day in August 1992. After years of campaigning by the local action group ZCAG, Greenpeace and South Sydney Council, the incinerator closed in 1996. In its last year the EPA classed the ash as hazardous. It stood empty for years before it was knocked down to make room for the town centre.
Contaminated Ground and Water
A century and a half of tanning, scouring, refining, glassmaking and car-making leaves its mark in the soil. The worst of it sits in the canal. On 25 August 2000 the NSW Environment Protection Authority declared the bed of the Alexandra Canal, from Huntley Street, Alexandria, to the Cooks River, a remediation site under the Contaminated Land Management Act. The EPA found organochlorine pesticides (chlordane, DDT and dieldrin), PCBs and metals in the sediment. It said there was hardly any life left in the canal bed, that PCBs in the fish were over the legal limits, and that disturbing the mud would stir the poisons up again. The Dictionary of Sydney quotes a 2008 EPA report calling it "the most severely contaminated canal in the southern hemisphere", and says plans to make it a "Venice of Sydney" were dropped that year because cleaning it up would cost too much.
On dry land, every old industrial block in Zetland has to be checked and cleaned up before people can live on it. NSW planning law (SEPP 55, "Remediation of Land") is there to make sure a change of use, especially to housing, doesn't put people's health at risk. A good example is 94–104 Epsom Road, the land next to Gunyama Park. A 2020 City of Sydney planning report says it was part of the racecourse, with army use during the war. Between 1952 and 1980 it was owned by Olympic Tyre & Rubber and used for car repair workshops and a petrol station, and from 1980 it was a council depot. The site investigation found hot spots with too much lead, PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and friable asbestos. The developer had to prepare a Remedial Action Plan to dig out the hot spots or bury them carefully, with sign-off from an accredited site auditor. The council also made it test for PFAS "forever chemicals" in the groundwater, which sits only about 3.5 metres down. The auditor's view was that the PFAS risk was very low and could be treated if it turned up.
The Housing Debates
Housing versus industry is an old fight here. In the early 1950s, as noted above, the County Council's industrial zoning stopped Nuffield putting houses on part of the racecourse. Next door, Wikipedia's Waterloo article says there were slum clearance plans from at least the 1960s, protests against new towers in the 1970s, and a Builders Labourers Federation green ban in 1974 to protect low-income housing. Zetland ended up with the incinerator in the 1960s partly because other parts of Sydney saw it as a convenient place to put their waste.
From Factories to Flats – Green Square
The Green Square plan says that after the war, manufacturing either shrank or moved out west, leaving big empty industrial blocks. The downturn sped up from the 1970s. In August 1993 the Department of Planning launched the Green Square Strategy, an "urban village" for up to 30,000 people on the old industrial land east of the incinerator. Planning really got going in 1995, after the Airport Link railway and a station at Green Square were announced. A design competition followed, and in 1998 the Green Square Structural Masterplan was released.
In 1996 the NSW Government set up the South Sydney Development Corporation to run the South Sydney Growth Centre, including the old Navy stores at Victoria Park. In December 1997 the Victoria Park land was sold to Landcom, the State's developer. Landcom put in the sewers, phone lines and roads (Gadigal Avenue among them), and its 1998 masterplan allowed for 2,500 homes for 3,800 people. Most of Green Square was rezoned in 1999 under the South Sydney plans, and the Victoria Park masterplan was approved the same year. By 1999 almost every building on the site had been knocked down except the heritage-listed Tote.
Council Boundaries
Zetland has changed councils several times. It sat in the old Municipality of Waterloo. Wikipedia's history of the City of South Sydney says a council by that name (first called Northcott) ran from 1968 to the start of 1982 and again from 1989 to 2004. The second South Sydney Council had its offices on Joynton Avenue, Zetland, until it moved to Redfern in 2001. In 2004 the State Government merged it with the City of Sydney. Along the way, the suburb boundaries were tidied up and Zetland was formally named a suburb in July 1996.
Victoria Park in the 1990s and 2000s
Private builders went to work on the cleared land. Among the first was 22 Gadigal Avenue, the ESP apartments, finished in 2004. It has 221 apartments and won an Australian Institute of Building award that year. The street names tell the site's story if you know how to read them. Levy and Hutchinson recall the old landholders. Joynton Avenue, Tote Park, Victoria Park Parade and Grandstand Parade recall the racecourse. Nuffield Park and Austin, Wolseley, Morris and Leyland Groves recall the car plant.
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East Village
East Village opened on 22 October 2014, with a supermarket, gym, shops and cafés, plus 206 apartments upstairs and a 6,500 square metre "Sky Park". Its address is Victoria Park, Cooper Place, so the Coopers are still on the map.
Why It's Called Green Square
The name Green Square is much newer than Zetland, and it doesn't refer to grass. Lisa Murray found that in 1937–38, when O'Riordan Street was rebuilt, a small reserve was made where it met Botany Road. Alexandria Council named it Green Square after Alderman Frederick Green, a Labor man who pushed hard for local industry and jobs, was mayor in 1937–38 and 1945, and later served as Member for Redfern from 1950 to 1968. Hardly anyone knew the name until the railway station opened in 2000. In 2012 the Council named the new town centre plaza Green Square to keep it going. When Urban Growth NSW pushed in 2013 and 2014 to rename the town centre as a separate suburb called Green Square, the City Historian recommended against it. Her view was that Zetland had been in continual use for about 140 years and shouldn't be changed "for expediency or fashion". She suggested Green Square be an "urban place" within Zetland and Alexandria instead.
The Library and Plaza
The City opened the Green Square Library and Plaza in September 2018. Stewart Hollenstein with Stewart Architecture won a worldwide competition to design it. Most of the library is underground, which is no small thing on land the City notes "was once a swamp". It has 40 skylights, a sunken garden, an amphitheatre and a six-storey glass tower poking up through the plaza. Hanging in the atrium is Cloud Nation, an aeroplane by the artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, with a tiny world of people and houses built onto it. It's a nice nod to Colin Defries and his 1909 flight just up the road. In 2019 the library won the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture.
Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre
Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre opened at 17 Zetland Avenue on 1 February 2021. The City says it's the biggest pool complex built in Sydney since the 2000 Olympics. Andrew Burges Architects, Grimshaw and TCL won the 2014 design competition, and CPB Contractors built it. There's a 50-metre outdoor pool set inside a bigger, beach-shaped pool, a 25-metre indoor pool, a hydrotherapy pool, a kids' water play area and a full-size sports field. The planting draws on the old wetlands. Out front is Bangala, a bronze sculpture by Aunty Julie Freeman (Eora/Yuin) and Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi), modelled on the water carriers Aboriginal people used along the east coast. After more than a century of drains, dams and dirty water, it seems fitting that water is now what brings people here.
Zetland Today
The numbers show how fast it's all happened. The City's 2015 plan says about 3,000 people lived in the Green Square area when it was rezoned in 1999, and 21,200 by 2014. At the 2021 Census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics counted 12,622 people in Zetland alone, with a median age of 30, in 7,466 private dwellings. Wikipedia gives 10,078 for 2016. The same 2015 plan expected Green Square to be home to 53,190 people by 2030.
Ebsworth Street now runs through the town centre and is billed as Sydney's first new high street in a century. Wikipedia says a new primary school is going onto the old hospital land on Joynton Avenue. The trams that ran through Zetland from 1902 until 1957 are long gone, as is the Zetland Post Office (1937 to 1983). But if you walk the Transform trail from the library you can still find old terraces, the horse trough and the Tote.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Gadigal Country of sandhills, creeks and wetlands, including the Waterloo Swamp.
- 1815 – First water mill built to use the swamp (City of Sydney).
- 1820 – Hutchinson and Terry part owners of the Waterloo flour mill.
- 1823 – 1,400 acres granted to William Hutchinson (the Waterloo Estate).
- 1825 – Daniel Cooper and Solomon Levey become sole owners of the Waterloo Company. The estate stays with the Coopers for decades.
- 1849 – Slaughter House Act pushes noxious trades a mile out of the city.
- 1850s – Cooper Estate has become an industrial suburb.
- 1874 – Governor Sir Hercules Robinson sets up Zetland Lodge stables.
- 1878 – Zetland Lodge passes to trainer Thomas Lamond.
- 1881 – Lamond's Zulu wins the Melbourne Cup.
- 1882–1916 – Southern outfall sewer runs through the district, partly as an open channel.
- 13 June 1885 – Zetland Estate goes to auction. Streets dedicated in August.
- 1886 – Zetland Hotel opens.
- 1887–1905 – Sheas Creek dug out as the Alexandra Canal.
- 1896 – Dugong bones and stone hatchets found in Sheas Creek.
- 1902 – Trams start running through Zetland.
- 1904 – Joynton Smith buys the swamp land.
- 1906 – Swamp drained via a trench to Sheas Creek.
- 15 January 1908 – Victoria Park Racecourse opens.
- 6 October 1908 – First motor race meeting at Victoria Park.
- 1909 – Colin Defries flies at Victoria Park.
- 1913 – South Sydney Hospital opens. It becomes "Royal" in 1917.
- 1938 – Green Square reserve named after Alderman Frederick Green.
- 1939 – Rheem makes its first Australian water heater at Waterloo.
- 1942 – Last races at Victoria Park. The military takes over.
- 1943 – Alexandria claims 550 factories and calls itself the "Birmingham of Australia".
- 1947/48 – Lord Nuffield buys the racecourse.
- March 1950 – Nuffield Australia's assembly plant opens.
- 10 December 1951 – Industrial subdivision approved. Housing is refused.
- 1954 – BMC (Australia) formed, with its head office at Victoria Park.
- 1957 – Zetland trams close.
- 23 March 1961 – Morris 850 (Mini) announced.
- 1966 – Moke production begins.
- 1972/73 – Waterloo Incinerator opens.
- 1973 – Leyland P76 launched.
- Late 1974 – Leyland closes the Zetland plant. The Navy moves in.
- 1989–2004 – Second South Sydney Council, with offices on Joynton Avenue until 2001.
- 1993 – Green Square Strategy launched.
- 1996 – Incinerator closes. The Navy has left. South Sydney Development Corporation set up. Zetland formally assigned as a suburb (19 July).
- 1997 – Victoria Park sold to Landcom.
- 1998 – Green Square Structural Masterplan and Victoria Park masterplan.
- 1999 – Most of Green Square rezoned. The old factories are demolished.
- 2000 – Green Square station opens. The EPA declares the Alexandra Canal bed a remediation site (25 August).
- 2003 – Royal South Sydney Hospital closes.
- 2004 – South Sydney merged into the City of Sydney. ESP apartments completed.
- 2007/08 – Incinerator demolished.
- 2013 – Trunk drain agreement between the City and Sydney Water.
- 22 October 2014 – East Village opens.
- 2018 – Joynton Avenue Creative Centre (May) and Green Square Library (September) open.
- 1 February 2021 – Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre opens.
- 2021 – Census counts 12,622 people in Zetland.
Where the Sources Disagree
- How the Earl of Zetland was connected to Robinson. The Dictionary of Sydney says the suburb was named after the Earl of Zetland in the 1870s "by his relative Governor Sir Hercules Robinson". Lisa Murray's City Historian report says the Earl was "reputedly a relation of his wife, Lady Robinson". Wikipedia says the stable was "presumably" named after the Earl because he was a friend of the Governor and a fellow mason. All three agree the suburb's name came through the Zetland Lodge stables. I couldn't find any source I could actually read that says the name came straight from a racehorse called "Lord Zetland". The racing link I could confirm is that the Earl was a leading turf man (his Voltigeur won the 1850 Derby) and that Robinson raced in the "Zetland" spots.
- When the swamp was drained and the course opened. The City's house history has Joynton Smith buying the land in 1904. The Joynton Park history says it was drained in 1906. The Green Square infrastructure plan says the racecourse was "created in 1906". The ADB and the Dictionary of Sydney both give the opening as 15 January 1908.
- When the racecourse closed. The house history says the last races were in 1942. The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and the Joynton Park history say 1944. Erik Nielsen's chapter title in Histories of Green Square runs "1908–1943". A 2020 City planning report says the Victoria Park company ran the site as a racecourse "from 1910 to 1946".
- What the course was used for in the war. The house history says the military took it over. Wikipedia says it was used for an aircraft factory. The 2020 planning report says part of it was an army base from 1939 to 1945.
- When Nuffield bought it and when the plant opened. Wikipedia says 1947, the City's house history says 1948. Wikipedia's BMC article says the plant opened in March 1950 (and elsewhere in the same article says it was "opened by Lord Nuffield in 1957"). The house history says it started as an assembly plant "around 1954 with about 150 employees".
- When the car plant closed. Wikipedia's P76 article says October 1974. The City's house history says December 1974. The Heritage Group book says "late 1974". The City's Joynton Park history and Wikipedia's Zetland and Victoria Park articles say 1975.
- The first mill. The City's house history says the first water mill went up in 1815. The Dictionary of Sydney says Hutchinson developed a water-powered flour mill in 1818. The ADB and the house history say Hutchinson was part owner of the Waterloo mill in 1820.
- The incinerator's dates. The City's Green Square plan says it ran from 1972 to 1996 and was demolished in 2008. Redfern News says it opened in 1973 and was demolished in 2007.
- Who founded the hospital, and when. The ADB says Joynton Smith founded (Royal) South Sydney Hospital in 1910. Wikipedia says fundraising began in 1908 with Smith as provisional president, building started in 1912 and it opened in 1913.
- When Green Square station opened. Lisa Murray's report says May 2000. The City's infrastructure plan says "late 2000".
My Earlier Posts
- Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail – A History of Sydney Transport
- Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began – From Bidjigal Country to the Steam Trams
- The Old Moore Park Zoo – Sydney's First Zoo at Billy Goat Swamp – 1884 to 1916
- Glebe Island – Sydney – From Gadigal and Wangal Country to Abattoirs, Swing Bridges, Silos and the Anzac Bridge
- Juanita Nielsen – Kings Cross Publisher, Victoria Street Green Ban Campaigner and Her Disappearance from the Carousel Cabaret – 4 July 1975
Sources
- City of Sydney, House history: 22 Gadigal Avenue, Zetland, case study, February 2025 – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney, "History of Joynton Park", 27 March 2013 – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- Lisa Murray, City Historian, "History and heritage assessment of placenames – Zetland and Green Square" (5 August 2013) and "Zetland – Green Square Town Centre – alternative suburb names" (28 January 2014), City of Sydney committee papers, 10 March 2014 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney, Draft Green Square Infrastructure Strategy and Plan, March 2015 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney News, "Discover Green Square's history on foot with a new self-guided walk" – news.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney, "Building a new library at Green Square" – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney News, "In pictures: Green Square's new library and plaza", 25 September 2018 – news.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney, "Building state-of-the-art Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre" – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- City of Sydney Local Planning Panel, "Development Application: 94–104 Epsom Road, Zetland – D/2019/1159", 1 July 2020 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- Planning Ingenuity, "Independent Assessment Report – 94–104 Epsom Road, Zetland – D/2019/976", City of Sydney – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- Laila Ellmoos, "Australian Glass Manufacturers", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney), 2013 – sydneybarani.com.au
- NSW Environment Protection Authority, "Declaration of Remediation Site No. 21008 – Alexandra Canal", 25 August 2000 – apps.epa.nsw.gov.au
- Ron Ringer, "From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013 – dictionaryofsydney.org
- Dictionary of Sydney, place records: "Zetland", "Victoria Park racecourse", "Waterloo Estate" – Zetland, Victoria Park racecourse, Waterloo Estate
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Culture and customs" and "Planning" – Culture and customs, Planning
- Paul Edwin Le Roy, "Hutchinson, William (1772–1846)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
- "Cooper, Daniel (1785–1853)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
- Bede Nairn, "Robinson, Sir Hercules George (1824–1897)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
- Chris Cunneen, "Smith, Sir James John Joynton (1858–1943)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
- BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group, MiniWorld (look-inside extract) – leylandaustralia.com.au
- BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group, BMC-Leyland Australia Reference (look-inside extract) – leylandaustralia.com.au
- Museums Victoria Collections, "Morris (BMC) Mini" – collections.museumsvictoria.com.au
- Rheem Australia, "Company Profile" – rheem.com.au
- Housing Industry Association, "A plumb Australian legend", June 2021 – hia.com.au
- Redfern News, "Tracing the Troubled Past of the Waterloo Incinerator in Zetland", 18 April 2023 – redfernnews.com.au
- WeekendNotes, "East Village – Official Opening and Market Day", 17 October 2014 – weekendnotes.com
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, "Zetland – 2021 Census All persons QuickStats" – abs.gov.au
- Wikipedia: Zetland, New South Wales; Victoria Park Racecourse, Sydney; Royal South Sydney Hospital; BMC Australia; Leyland P76; Green Square, New South Wales; Waterloo, New South Wales; City of South Sydney; Thomas Dundas, 2nd Earl of Zetland
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.
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