Cabramatta, New South Wales

Cabramatta is a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, 32 km west of the Sydney CBD. It is a predominantly Chinese commercial area, with some Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese businesses also present. The suburb has a longstanding image problem, primarily due to its drug related reputation as a popular distribution point for heroin, and in particular around its railway station. Looking past this veneer, one finds that Cabramatta was a remarkable melting pot for all manner of Asian and European peoples in the latter half of the 20th century.

Cabramatta is fast becoming the Asian food capital of Greater Sydney. It’s Australia’s largest restaurant and shopping precinct. Choose from Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Cantonese, Cambodian & Laotian cuisines. The array of fresh produce is stunning and the precinct is a bargain shoppers paradise.

Origins and history

The origin of the suburb's name is obscure, but is believed to have been derived from two Aboriginal words, cabra and matta, meaning grub and point or jutting out piece of land respectively.

The name first came into use in the area in the early 19th century, when a family called Bull named a property that they had purchased Cabramatta Park. When a small village formed nearby in 1814, it took its name from the property. A township grew from this village. A railway was built through it in the 1850s. However, Cabramatta did not get a railway station until 1870. Initially, it was used for loading and unloading freight and livestock - it was not open for public transport until 1872. A school was established in Cabramatta in 1882 and a post office in 1886.

Cabramatta remained a predominantly agricultural township, in Sydney's outer fringes, throughout the 19th century. It developed a close community relationship with neighbouring Canley Vale, and until 1899, they shared a common municipality. In 1948, Cabramatta's local government merged with that of the neighbouring Fairfield City Council, and is now run by that local government.

It evolved into a Sydney suburb in the mid 20th century, partly as the result of a major state housing project in the nearby Liverpool area in the 1960s that in turn swallowed Cabramatta.

The presence of a migrant hostel alongside Cabramatta High School was decisive in shaping the community in the post-war period. In the first phase, large numbers of post-war immigrants from Europe passed through the hostel and settled in the surrounding area during the 1950s and 1960s. They satisfied labour demand for surrounding manufacturing and construction activities, and were soon to produce their own children in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The entreprenuers amongst them were hard at work building all manner and scale of enterprises.

In the 1980s, Cabramatta and the surrounding Fairfield area was characterised by a diversity of Australian born children having migrant parents. Cabramatta High School was statistically the most diverse and multicultural school in Sydney, and a study showed that only 10% of children had both parents born in Australia. While many other parts of Sydney had their particular ethic flavour, Cabramatta was something of a melting pot yet to find a clear identity.

Across the 1980s, many of these migrant parents and their children - now young adults - were to settle in the surrounding area and populate housing developments in areas such as Smithfield and Bonnyrigg that were, until that time, market gardens or semi-rural areas owned by their parents generation. The soccer crazed teenagers of the 1980s became matured some 20 years later, into world class talent originating from the Bonnyrigg area.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the migrant hostel - along with its peer in Villawood - hosted a second wave of migration: this time from south east asia as a result of the Vietnam War. During the 1980s, Cabramatta was vastly transformed into a thriving Asian community, displacing many of the previous migrant generation. The students of Cabramatta High School represented all manner of peoples with Asian or European descent. The hectic centre of Cabramatta could have been confused with the streets of Saigon and historic "Chinatown" in the Sydney CBD appeared woefully westernised in comparison.

By the early 1980s, the migrant hostel lay empty with its many hundreds of small apartments prey to vandalism and the antics of teenagers. Only the language school remained: it continued to teach English as a Second Language into the early 1990s, until such time as the entire hostel site was demolished and developed into residential housing. A walk through the hostel at that time revealed closed and boarded-up corrugated iron buildings once home to kitchens, washing facilities, administration and so forth -- these buildings had so much history to tell.

By the 1990s, Cabramatta seemed to have developed an identity. Liverpool grew into a bustling commercial and consumer epicentre of the region, taking much shine away from Fairfield which seemed to never have recovered. In between these two, Cabramatta became uniquely, and infamously, known by its Asian reputation as a specialist niche in the city as `the` place for an authentic Asian experience of any kind.

Crime problems

Cabramatta has become known for several crime problems. Drug-dealing is one of these. These drug activities began in the 1990s. Much of the drug-dealing is reported to be done by juveniles of predominantly Asian origin. Many drug addicts were drawn to this area and a train stopping at Cabramatta Station was known as the "smack express" to these addicts. Many of them indulged in their habit in the immediate Cabramatta area, with some dying from overdoses in places such as public toilets.

The heroin problem, and attempts to contain it, has been the source of much controversy and failed actions involving politicians, senior police, human rights organisations and the media. As of 2002, the problem has been reported as having receded.

Cabramatta is also remembered for the political murder of a NSW State MP, John Newman, outside his home there in September, 1994. Acts of political violence are rare in Australia and thus this assassination drew much attention and alarm. A local nightclub owner and political rival, Phuong Ngo, was convicted of the murder in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two of Ngo's associates were found not guilty of the murder. In 2003, Ngo failed in an appeal against his sentence.

External links

• This Fairfield City Council website (http://www.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/default.asp?iSubCatID=297&iNavCatID=1) gives a scenic tour of Cabramatta.
• This transcript (http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s72739.htm) of an 1997 episode of the Australian current affairs program "Four Corners" explored the Cabramatta scene and its heroin and murder problems.
• Australians old and new (Economist print edition, May 5th 2005) (http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3908360) relates: "A quarter of Australia's population was born abroad, and another quarter is made up of first-generation natives. At a time of globalisation, this is a tremendous strength, and with unemployment at its lowest level for almost 30 years further immigration is unlikely to provoke much discontent. Parts of Sydney are already starting to feel noticeably Asian. The suburb of Cabramatta, in the south-west, has a large Vietnamese population: walk around its main market area, and you will hardly see an English sign. But it is not a ghetto: most people who live there work elsewhere, and as people get richer, they swiftly move to more affluent areas."