City of Liverpool, New South Wales

The City of Liverpool is a Local Government Area to the southwest of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

History

It is one of the oldest urban settlements in Australia, founded in 1810 as an agricultural centre by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. He named it after Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, who was then the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Liverpool is at the head of navigation of the Georges River and combined with the Great Southern Railway from Sydney to Melbourne reaching Liverpool in the late 1850s, Liverpool became a major agricultural and transportation centre as the land in the district was very productive. A large army base was established in Liverpool during World War I, and exists to this day as the Holsworthy Barracks. There are a number of other military establishments in neighbouring Moorebank.

Until the 1950s, Liverpool was still a satellite town with an agricultural economy based on poultry farming and market gardening. However the tidal surge of urban sprawl which engulfed the rich flatlands west of Sydney known as the Cumberland Plain soon reached Liverpool, and it became an outer suburb of metropolitan Sydney with a strong working-class presence and manufacturing facilities. Liverpool also became renowned for its vast Housing Commission estates housing thousands of low-income families after the slum clearance and urban renewal programs in inner-city Sydney in the 1960s.

Liverpool today

The estimated population in 2002 was 163,464. Liverpool covers an area of 313 km²; though most of this is still agricultural land, the Liverpool CBD has become the major commercial center of south-west Sydney, as it includes many shopping centers and high-rise office buildings. Within the Liverpool city area there are many open spaces and natural environment areas. These include the Georges River, Chipping Norton Lakes and many other other bushland areas which are part of Western Sydney Parklands. A shooting centre in the area was used as part of the 2000 Olympic Games, and Warwick Farm Racecourse is used as a track for horse race meetings in Sydney.

Today Liverpool continues to grow, with new residential subdivisions and shopping centres being constructed in the western part of the City of Liverpool. Much of the City's area is still devoted to smallhold agriculture, though this is slowly being enveloped by urban sprawl. Through it has lost much of its old working-class character and has become one of the most multicultural cities in Australia. The main ethnic groups which exist within the Liverpool City area include Serbs, Fijian Indians, Italians, Vietnamese, Lebanese and Pacific Islanders. As well as this there are many other groups, such as Hispanics, Filipinos, Turkish Greeks, Croatians, Bosnians, Macedonians and Assyrians, which live within the area, giving it a truly multicultural feel.

Liverpool's transport facilities include the Hume Highway, the Cumberland Highway, the M5 motorway, the M7 Motorway and an electric railway service to Sydney, Campbelltown and Parramatta. It also has a Liverpool to Parramatta transit way which buses travel through. It is home to the largest municipal library in Australia , a large teaching hospital, two technical colleges and many shopping centres and office buildings. Industries include a large cable factory, a telephone manufacturer, pharmaceutical laboratories and cold storage plants.

Liverpool is also host to "Sonic Stir-fry", a popular and well known community radio program broadcast every Friday night at 10pm.

The private hospital operator Healthscope owns the Sydney Southwest Private Hospital in Liverpool.

Council

The Council was dismissed in 1976 and March 2004, due to financial mismanagement.

Liverpool participates in international town twinning and has twinned with Liverpool in the United Kingdom.

Suburbs in the local government area

Suburbs in the City of Liverpool are:

• Ashcroft
• Austral
• Badgerys Creek
• Bringelly
• Busby
• Cartwright
• Casula
• Cecil Hills
• Chipping Norton
• Denham Court
• Edmondson Park
• Glenfield - Note: It only has governence from the northern section of Glenfield Road
• Green Valley
• Greendale
• Hammondville
• Heckenberg
• Hinchinbrook
• Holsworthy
• Horningsea Park
• Hoxton Park
• Kemps Creek
• Leppington
• Liverpool
• Lurnea
• Middleton Grange
• Miller
• Moorebank
• Pleasure Point
• Prestons
• Rossmore
• Sadleir
• Voyager Point
• Warwick Farm
• Wattle Grove
• West Hoxton

Notes

External links

• Liverpool City Council website
• 2001 Census Information

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