Local government elections in NSW will be held on Saturday 14 September 2024. Campaigning has begun. Election posters are appearing and candidates are appearing wherever crowds gather. When I walked up to the Orange Grove Markets recently I met up with two of the Labor candidates Darcy Byrne, the current Mayor of Sydney’s Inner West Council, and Kerrie Fergusson Labor candidate for Balmain-Baludarri Ward.

We exchange details and later I noticed that Kerrie had posted an image on Facebook from one of the many small parks in the inner west.

She asked visitors to her page if they knew which park was pictured? Of course it was immediately obvious to me that it was Roselle Common.

This brought back many memories. My first visit was around about 1980. Two years earlier I had bought a house in Cecily Street Lilyfield for the princely some $35,000. It’s hard to believe that places in Lilyfield were relatively inexpensive in 1978 but that’s how it was. The area had yet to experience the wave of gentrification that was sweeping through Balmain and percolating through the eastern margins of Rozelle.

Lilyfield still had a working class element, and was also a place where people with families, looking for a cheap place to race their children, were tending to move.

The North Western Expressway

Not long after the move into Lilyfield the likely impact of the planned above ground North Western Freeway became apparent. It was obvious that the new house would be on its verge.

We were on the ridge above Eastern Park the route of the planned expressway went through an area between Eastern Park and the ridge top.

Declaration of the Common

Conversations in the neighbourhood soon led to a group of us calling a public meeting to consider the implications of the proposed North Western Freeway.

The meeting assembled several weeks later on area of land in Cook Street Rozelle that been cleared for the construction of the freeway. To the north and south houses remained intact but had been resumed by the then Department of Main Roads for future demolition. Some of been occupied by squatters who also quite willingly joined the gathering.

As a symbolic gesture we declared the area the Rozelle Common also hoping this was what it might become in the future.

To cut a potentially long story short, the North Western Freeway didn’t proceed, superseded by advances in tunneling technology and the small area officially became The Rozelle Common.

A first gathering of Residents on the Rozelle Common

Residents gathering on the vacant lot that became The Rozelle Common.