NSWFarming
Redfern
A surgeon’s estate that became Sydney’s railway suburb.
1817Surgeon William Redfern granted 100 acres
WHAT STARTED IT
Governor Macquarie granted 100 acres of low, swampy ground south of Sydney Town to the surgeon William Redfern in 1817. The estate was cut into small lots from 1834, and when the colony’s first railway opened in 1855 its Sydney terminus stood on the Cleveland Paddocks just north of it.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Tanners, wool-washers and boiling-down works moved in after an 1849 law pushed noxious trades out of the city. Redfern became a municipality in 1859, and the Eveleigh railway workshops, opened beside the line in 1887, made it a district of railway workers. Redfern also became a centre of Sydney’s Aboriginal community, and in 1973 Aboriginal families who had resisted eviction won federal money to buy houses on ‘The Block’.
TURNING POINTS
1817Macquarie grants William Redfern 100 acres south of Sydney Town on 20 June.
1855The Sydney–Parramatta railway opens on 26 September from a terminus at Cleveland Paddocks, beside Redfern.
1859The Municipality of Redfern is proclaimed on 11 August.
1870Redfern Town Hall is built on the corner of Pitt and Wells streets.
1917Workers from the Eveleigh railway workshops lead the walkout on 2 August that starts the Great Strike.
1973The federal government buys 41 houses bounded by Louis, Vine, Eveleigh and Caroline streets, managed by the new Aboriginal Housing Company.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
An inner-city suburb of terraces, public housing and old factories around Redfern station. The former Eveleigh locomotive workshops now hold offices and a technology park.