Four Green Houses and a Red Hotel by Pete Wargent

Author:Pete Wargent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2013-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

12

INVESTING IN SYDNEY AND NSW

12

Sydney’s early development

Sydney is built upon sandstone which originally supported a wide variety of plant life and species — being one of the eminent cities in the world for biodiversity — but Sydney had few animals, and the quality of the soil is generally rather poor.1 The sandstone is believed to have been formed by sand which came from Antarctica! These geographical weaknesses have not stopped the area becoming home to Australia’s largest metropolis and more than 4.6 million people today.

Of course, Aboriginal tribes had already inhabited the region before European arrivals for many thousands of years, the Cadigal tribe in particular. While the first fleet arrived only a little over two centuries ago, Aborigines have occupied the area for millennia, shell middens suggesting that the Cadigal tribe have occupied Pyrmont area (once known as Pirrama) for perhaps 5000 or 6000 years. Other tribes had been around for far longer still.

Sydney’s harbour is its most distinctive feature, having been carved out by massive rivers some 90 million years ago when New Zealand split away from the mainland and the Pacific Ocean formed between the two countries we know today.2 Here’s an incredible mind-bending fact: 15,000 years ago Sydney Harbour was completely dry! The enormous expanse of water now in the harbour was simply not there, and even more amazingly, some Aborigines were almost certainly there to witness the dry harbour. At that time the ocean levels were around 140 metres lower than they are today, and the shoreline was some 30km east of the heads.3

By 1800, there were still fewer than 5000 Europeans in New South Wales, a number which increased exponentially over the following decades, particularly after gold was first discovered in the 1850s, instantaneously igniting immigration. The population of the state increased to 400,000 by the 1880s and is still growing very strongly even today and is forecast to grow beyond 7 million!4

Property investors are wise to consider areas in which population growth is strong, and Sydney definitely offers this!

By the early 1880s, it was noted that people tended not to live in the city itself, and this even included the wealthy.5 Much like the Englishman, Australians tended to return home to the suburbs to live in single, multi-storey buildings, which were then common.6 This trend of the popularity of suburban living continues to the present day. It is often considered more desirable to live some distance away from the centre of the city in suburbs where there is a little more space, and property investors would be wise to take note of this.

Inner-and middle-ring suburbs make for better investments than the CBD itself.

The infamous Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in 1932, during the greatest depression Australia has ever known, and from that point onwards and against all the odds, Sydney has progressed towards becoming the major international centre and metropolis that it is today.7

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