Walking the Parramatta Road

by Cassi Plate

In March 2001, as he launched the Parramatta Road revitalisation project, Ashfield Mayor and president of the Inner Metropolitan Regional Organization of Councils (IMROC), Mark Bonnano called this major artery a 'varicose vein'. Poor old Parramatta Road - variously described as 'a slap in the face', 'an icon like the Opera House' or 'an epic road', 'a romantic road leading west ... towards the frontier'.

To move beyond the limited thinking about the road, Dr Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney, initiated a research project in 1999, in association with IMROC. The project's aim was to investigate what the road means to the people who live and work with it; to create a cultural and community archive by reviewing histories and recording personal accounts. By focusing on actual human experience of the dynamic space of Parramatta Road, in the present and across the layers of the past, the report provides a context for planning and decision-making. This innovative social research project is now a piece of community property.

Every chapter of Sydney's history has been written on Parramatta Rd.

Parramatta Road is central to the history and heritage of Sydney, yet it is a neglected zone as far as the imaging culture of the city is concerned. It is 'behind the scenes' of postcard Sydney, a work zone. It resides in the city's consciousness as a 'bad space': ugly, noisy, abrasive. By wandering and interviewing up and down the road and in and out of archives the researchers were able to move through the clamour to reveal the layers of social history, personal experience and cultural change. The road came alive as the landforms, working history and personal histories were revealed.

The Colonial Road

Following in the footsteps of the Darug people, moving along the ridges to the south of the Parramatta River, dipping across 37 creeks (all bridged by 1821), the original track enabled the movement of military personnel between the townships of Sydney and Parramatta, making it a pathway to the continuing land wars further west. From its earliest days Parramatta Road was disparaged: 'A more disagreeable road it is impossible to conceive', the track's clay foundations rising up periodically to resist the civilising process.

The Working Road

Parramatta Road is a remarkable site for the vast amount of living and working done on and along its route. This 'Battler's Road' has been a means of sustenance for ensuing waves of people, the principal route for Sydney's food supply and a site for markets at different points along its length for nearly 200 years. One hundred years ago, children's games of cricket on the section of the road near Taverner's Hill were interrupted only by the Bullock drays hauling wool bales. As recently as the 1960s, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle making their way to the Homebush Abattoirs occasionally filled the Parramatta roadway. Many Australian industries began their lives in premises along the Parramatta Road: wool and flour mills, car and clothing manufacturing and biscuit making, many housed in memorable buildings which marked the landscape for travellers along the route who would mentally 'tick them off' as they traversed its length. Like much of Sydney, large sections of the road are now a construction site, as land use is transformed from industrial to housing.

Walking the Parramatta Road

'The road is full of mendings: it's like an old scarred body.'

After suffering a decline following the opening of the Sydney-Parramatta railway in the 1850s, the explosion of car ownership in the affluence of post-World War II Australia created an entirely new Parramatta Road. A road once defined as a hub of community activity became re-defined by the volume and scale of traffic pouring daily along the bitumen: 'It's like a great gash between the communities on either side'. Although described by another interviewee as 'a monument to human error', the road's very excess is part of its fascination. As Jane Goodall writes in the research report: 'Parramatta Road is not just a bad road, it is a symbolically bad road, a notorious emblem of all that is ugly, abrasive and frustrating. Perhaps, though, as is the case with humans who are famous for being bad, there is a kind of charisma about this reputation. The road is also slightly larger than life, because it has seen so much life, and if it repels, it also fascinates with an equal potency'. What better way to enter into a place which is both dense with experience, and defined by its ordinariness, than to walk its length, defying the harshness of the terrain - the traffic, the noise, the jarring concrete?

On the 14 May 2000, members of the public, especially those living or working near Parramatta Road were invited to join a 'City to City' marathon, and walk all or part of the way from Parramatta to Central Station, led by the innovative performance group 'DE QUINCY ETC.' Live coverage of the event by ABC Sydney Metropolitan radio station 2BL allowed non-participants to experience a 'virtual walk'. Walkers could feel the 'lie of the land', count and name the canals, creeks and rivers crossed by the Parramatta Road, identify ancient taverns and patches of remnant scrub, and discuss our relationship to the road. The walk was performed, filmed, photographed, written, and sound recorded, creating a multi-purpose archive.

Re-Viewing Parramatta Road - 2000 and Beyond

'Sydney's back alley' was under the spotlight in 2000. Despite being by-passed as the official route to the Sydney Olympics, it formed part of Sydney's western zone, opening it up to new eyes and judgements. It continues to confound idealistic planners, image-makers and those intent on beautification. 'The Parramatta Road is an important heritage site not for its "yesteryear" appearance (very little of which remains) but for the density of the social history that collects around it.' (Walking the Parramatta Road: Research report for Parramatta Road 2000 and Beyond, Goodall, 2000)

Oral accounts of life on and along Parramatta Road fifty or sixty years ago spark visions of restaging people's parades, holding dance competitions along closed-off strips, with bands, billy carts (skate boards, scooters and roller blades), animals and decorated vehicles...

Cassi Plate
cassi.plate@uts.edu.au
24 January 2002

For more on the Parramatta Road 2000 and Beyond project go to www.parramattaroad.net or contact IMROC and the Parramatta Rd 2000 Project at PO Box 491, Burwood, NSW, 1805