AuthorGeorge VanceSheila EnglishPublication Year1991 (second edition)Link to PublicationFairfield City Open LibrariesPublished byFairfield City CouncilDescriptionThe history of the Fairfield City District does not emanate from the simple, single set of circumstances like the beginnings of many settlements in the New South Wales colony. Instead Fairfield's foundation arose from a number of factors, with each region of the district having its own story.
The development of the City was influenced by both the fortunes of chance and the result of planning. The people who came to settle the area were extremely diverse and represented every rank and station of the Colony...cat-scared convicts, emancipists struggling to survive on meagre grants, the privileged officers of the New South Wales Corps, the miserable orphans of a harsh society, the squatters, speculators, migrants and farmer-settlers who took their chances in an area remote from the Colony's towns and highways.
There is a good deal of 'what might have been if...' in the district's story. Typical if this is Smithfield which stood in the threshold if being 'thrice the size of Parramatta in thirty years' only to see human frailties and unhappy timing snatch away its opportunities...or, how the new suburbs in the south-west of Fairfield might have fared if the Depression hadn't stifled their development. However for every story of misfortune, there was the balance where luck favoured the outcome - like the chance selection of Fairfield for the site of the sole railway station on a new rail route; or when authorities chose the district for massive new housing projects; or having the space available for the remarkable expansion which occurred after two World Wars.
Today, Fairfield City covers just on one hundred square kilometers in a central region of Sydney metropolitan area. The City is serviced by two rail routes, is conveniently accessible to all the major highways and free-ways, has extensive industrial areas and several town-planned dormitory suburbs.
Fairfield City proudly claims the highest migrant population of any local government area in the nation, with the largest Italians, Yugoslavians and South-East Asian communities in Australia.
It seems a far cry from the 'trackless immeasurable desert in a awful silence' described by Captain-Lieutenant Watkin Tench, nearly two centuries ago. Copy rightsFairfield City Council
Sheila English, Fairfield, A History of the District. Fairfield City Heritage Collection, accessed 19/01/2026, https://heritagecollection.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/389
