Lakemba
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Lakemba is a Sydney suburb located on the Western railway line from Sydney Central to Bankstown. Lakemba is noted for having a large Lebanese Muslim community and a large and impressive mosque. It also has a large well established Greek Community with Greek Orthodox Club and nearby large Greek Orthodox Church.
Residents also include people from many parts of the world including Sierra Leone, Ghana, Eastern European countries (especially following the fall of communism), South-East Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and islanders (eg Fijian, Tongan and Maori).
History
The first inhabitants of Lakemba and surrounding areas were Australian Aboriginals who arrived about 40,000 years ago. At the time of British settlement in 1788 the inhabitants were Aborigines of the Darug language group (a way of defining tribe) and they called themselves, and were known as Kuri or Koori. Land grants by the new colonial government began in Lakemba about 1810.
The soil is clay based on Wianamatta shale and is the Eastern edge of the great Cumberland Plain. The topography is low rolling hills and drains to the Cooks River which is tidal up to the North Eastern edge of Lakemba. Before settlement, the vegetation was open eucalyptus woodland.
Benjamin Taylor had a 22 hectare property in the 1880s. He named his property "Lakeba" (pronounced Lakemba) after an island in the Lau Island group of Fiji where his second wife's grandparents, Rev and Mrs Cross, were missionaries from 1835. One of the original streets is Oneata Street, named after a small Fijian Island close to Lakeba.
The railway line was built to the neighbouring suburb of Belmore in 1895 and extended to and beyond Lakemba in 1909. The station was named after the house of Benjamin Taylor who was variously Town Clerk, Alderman and Mayor of Canterbury Council, which had Lakemba (the house and new station) in its Municipality boundary. The station was built on Taylor's property. Canterbury is now a city within the Sydney Metropolitan Area.
It is interesting to see how Canterbury Road winds its way along the ridge which is the boundary of the watersheds of Cooks River and Wolli Creek to the South. Similarly interesting is the way the Hume Highway winds its way along the ridge which is the boundary of Cooks River and Parramatta River (Sydney Harbour) to the North. The soil on these ridges is flatter, deeper and better drained. The views for settler housing more commanding. The underlying clay of the upper ridges is redder than the less well drained yellow clays down the slopes, and the very poorly drained grey clay soils towards the bottom of the slopes. The soils near the streams (Cooks River barely qualifies as a river) are alluvial. Cooks River has its origins near Yagoona and includes Rookwood in its infrequent flow and catchment.
Cooks River flows into Botany Bay which was the original destination of the First Fleet in 1788. This Bay was abandoned within one week by the new British colonisers who established the colony in Sydney Cove, which was quickly recognised to be one of the finest harbours in the world.
The name Botany Bay remained seared in the imagination of Britain for many generations as the name of the new colony and remains today as the main gateway into and out of Australia in the form of the international airport which has been built into the bay. Botany Bay was originally called Stingray Bay by Cook for the huge stingrays (eg 200 kg) which were not hunted by Aborigines. These stingrays were quickly fished out by the new settlers.
Muslim contact with Australia predated British contact by at least two hundred years, and possibly back to the 9th Century CE. There are records of the Maccasans of Sulawesi Indonesia trading with the Australian Aboriginals of Northern Australia well before European colonisation into Asia, Australasia and the Pacific.
Other facts
The Imam of the Lakemba Mosque, Sheik Taj El-Din al Hilaly, styles himself "Grand Mufti of Australia".