NSWRail & telegraph
Cabramatta
A farm township around a railway platform became Little Saigon.
1870Station opens on the Great Southern Railway
WHAT STARTED IT
The Great Southern Railway passed through farmland here on its way to Liverpool from 1856, and Cabramatta had its own station by 1870. Land agents then cut up the surrounding grants into township lots, auctioned from 1884 and later advertised with the ‘railway station in centre of property’. The name is said to come from an Aboriginal word for a place where the cabra, a kind of shipworm, was found.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Orchard, vineyard and poultry blocks were sold around the township, and the Municipality of Cabramatta and Canley Vale was separated from Liverpool in December 1892. A second line, from Lidcombe through Regents Park, reached Cabramatta in October 1924. The council merged with Fairfield in 1948. European migrants settled after the Second World War, and from the late 1970s refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos made the town centre a Southeast Asian shopping district.
TURNING POINTS
1870Cabramatta appears as a station in the Great Southern Railway timetable from 1 July.
1884Lots in the Township of Cabramatta are offered at auction beside the railway.
1892The Municipality of Cabramatta and Canley Vale is separated from Liverpool in December.
1924The railway from Lidcombe via Regents Park is officially opened to Cabramatta on 14 October.
1948Cabramatta and Canley Vale council merges with Fairfield.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A shopping and residential centre in Fairfield City. In 2021 more than a third of residents were born in Vietnam.