A large sporting complex that now adjoins the old house site is called Milton Park. This forms part of the long band of parks that now stretch from the railway line to the Georges River. Alderman Greg Percival, who spearheaded this concept, aimed to create a “green belt” between Macquarie Fields and Ingleburn.
Street lights, parks, water and sealed roads all took their time in coming to Ingleburn. But when these things did arrive after World War I, it was “full steam ahead”. From 1896 to 1948, Ingleburn had its own Council and in 1920 Mayor Arthur Harper said water connection had formally ended the town’s “stagnant” period.
Kings Road, thought to have been named after King Edward VII (1901-10), led to an old rural subdivision on the river banks. The only remnants of this estate are Bensley Road, Fern Dale Street and Helder Street, presumedly named after early residents or farms.
Ingleburn Reserve, alongside the river, appears to have been dedicated as early as 1870, and was certainly a popular picnic ground for residents by the 1920s.
Development of the township increased after World War II and in the fifties, Ingleburn’s population passed the 2000 mark. When an ultra-modern Hotel Ingleburn opened for business in 1955, the local press insisted the community’s future was assured. “The confidence of the many builders who have erected or are erecting the many up-to-date premises now gracing the town”, was held up by the newspaper as evidence.
Rivalry with Campbelltown became an important source of motivation. When that southern town got its own public high school in 1956, it was only a matter of time before the rising settlement of the north got one as well. Although lessons for pupils were held at Macquarie Fields Public School from 1960, a proper Ingleburn High School finally opened on Oxford Road in 1963.
Some of the students came from burgeoning housing estates in the suburb, which had began in earnest in the early 1950s.
Matthews Square was created from the property of Harley Matthews, who had been a correspondent and poet in the Great War. Nearby Ellis Street noted a prominent local family. Robert Ellis had built a private Roman Catholic chapel in his home which he named St Angela after his late wife. Harris Street noted Ingleburn Mayor William Harris (1913-16), an early conservationist who planted many of the trees that can be found in the suburb today.
Also formed and sealed was Palmer Street, believed to honour Reverend Palmer, the Anglican minister of the 1920s who preferred to live in the township rather than at the isolated Denham Court rectory.
Images of Australiana rose to the surface in the late 1950s, when new streets like Blue Gum Avenue and Koala Avenue had a distinct “dinkum” flavour.
Green images became popular in the early sixties, resulting in Treelands Avenue, Park Street, Banksia Place and Orchard Place.
There was also expansion south of Chester Road, where open farm paddocks were slowly swallowed by new homes. As these estates were near the old Gertrude and Percy Street subdivision of the 19th Century, new streets adopted Christian names as well, to maintain a “continuity” of sorts. The result was a jumble of names including Desmond, Bradley, Myra, Roma, Edna, Ellen, Valda, Karen, Kylie, Rodney, Rebecca, Amanda, Enid, Sandra, Fiona, Kim, Clifford, Hazel, Irene and Brett. These were development throughout the 1970s and as recently as 1991 Council approved the name Michael Place for a new street. (Nearby Sackville Street Public School was opened in 1977 and named after its street address).
Ingleburn was outraged in 1973 when a Daily Mirror article described it as a “wasteland” dominated by “ugliness, lack of amenities and boredom”.
The following year plans for the suburb’s long-term development were finally exhibited. Parts of this “blueprint” have never been realised, such as the proposal to close Oxford Street at the town centre and turn it into a pedestrian mall. But many other ground plans have come to fruition, such as the massive new housing subdivisions.
“Campbelltown’s Streets and Suburbs – How and why they got their names” written by Jeff McGill, Verlie Fowler and Keith Richardson, 1995, published by Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society.
Reproduced with permission of the authors.
