NSWFarming
Chatswood
Orangeries on the ridge road became the North Shore’s busiest centre.
1875Chatswood Estate offered on Lane Cove Road
WHAT STARTED IT
Chatswood grew along Lane Cove Road, the ridge track from Milsons Point to Hornsby, where settlers ran orangeries and orchards in the 1870s. When the North Shore railway opened in 1890 a station was placed here, and the centre moved to Victoria Avenue beside it.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The district was governed from 1865 by the Municipality of North Willoughby. Land in the Chatswood Estate was on sale in the 1870s, and a post office opened on Lane Cove Road in 1879. After the railway came, the post office moved to Victoria Avenue near the station in 1897. From the 1950s Chatswood grew into a major shopping and office centre, and high-rise housing followed from the 1990s.
TURNING POINTS
1865The Municipality of North Willoughby is proclaimed, taking in the Chatswood district.
1875Allotments in the Chatswood Estate on Lane Cove Road, near the Wesleyan chapel, are advertised at £50 an acre.
1878Richardson and Wrench auction blocks on Lane Cove Road near Russell’s Hotel, opposite several orangeries, with an omnibus from Milsons Point.
1879A post office named Chatswood opens on Lane Cove Road.
1890Chatswood station opens on 1 January with the Hornsby–St Leonards railway.
1897The post office moves to Victoria Avenue beside the station.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
The commercial centre of the City of Willoughby, with large shopping centres around a rail and metro interchange. Local tradition, repeated in a Henry Lawson poem, says the name comes from ‘Chattie’s Wood’.