The Sylvania Heights Strip: A Little Strip of Shops, With Lots of Variety & Great Prices

Sylvania Heights is part of the Sylvania suburb in southern Sydney (near Sutherland, Blakehurst and Hurstville) in NSW & is located 22 kms from Sydney CBD, just 200m south of Southgate Shopping Centre.

Although Sylvania is mostly residential it also contains areas of native bushland and some commercial developments at Tom Ugly's bridge (at the Georges River), Southgate Shopping Centre, Sylvania Waters, along Port Hacking Road toward Miranda, and on the Princes Highway at Sylvania Heights, a locality in the south-western part of the suburb, and all those localities share the same postcode (2224).

Sylvania Heights has many residents who are served well by their group of local businesses along the Princes Highway and surrounding streets, many of whom have been serving the local residents for a great number of years.

Sylvania Heights businesses are very ecologically and community-conscious enterprises and are competetive in both variety and price. They always endeavour to exceed their customers expectations in their efforts to provide residents with honest and reliable service and overall value-for-money.

Suburb History

After European settlement, this land was acquired by John Connell Laycock as a Crown grant, although the traditional owners of Sylvania are the Dharawal Aboriginal people and their archaeological heritage is evident in a number of registered middens, burial and art sites in rockshelters on the Georges River.

Thomas Holt (after whom Holt Road is named), a prominent landowner, financier and politician, acquired it a few years later as part of the Holt-Sutherland Estate, some 13,000 acres (53 km2). The name of the suburb clearly relates to its original wooded vegetation (‘sylvan’ which means wooded or inhabiting the woods).

Thomas Holt built Sutherland House on the foreshore of Gwawley Bay in 1818, on the eastern side of Sylvania. He established the Sutherland Estate Company in 1881 and a village grew here, with a post office opening in 1883. The school opened in 1884 but closed in 1891 and was not reopened until 1925. Sylvania Heights Public School opened in 1955.[2]

'Sutherland House' no longer stands (only its gate posts survive), but there are a number of heritage-listed buildings in the suburb. They include the original St Mark's timber church (now Sylvania Public School Library); a timber residence in Evelyn Street associated with the Holt Estate; 'Glenn Robin', built by William Glenn Wade on land he acquired in 1949 and completed in 1954; and 'Green Gables' built by Sidney and Clarisse Bayer between 1946 and 1952 on Kangaroo Point.*[1]

In 1913 the 3 hectare area bounded by Florida Street, Harrow Street, Mowbray Street and Illawarra Road (now the Princes Highway) was known as the Swastika Estate.

Much of the land of Sylvania Waters was 'reclaimed' from Gwawley Bay. Sylvania Waters Estate was developed by L.J.Hooker in the 1960s; land offered had water frontages with boating facilities. Streets were named after Australian rivers to emphasise the association with water, such as Shoalhaven, Tweed, Murrumbidgee, Hawkesbury and Barwon.

Notable Past & Present Residents

• Anthony Choi aka Bing Lee died 1987, founder of the Bing Lee retailing company
• Edward Duyker Historian and author
• Jim Russell, cartoonist
• Dudley Simpson Composer and conductor
• Glenn Stevens Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia
• Angus Young - AC/DC Guitarist
• Sonny Bill Williams Rugby League/Rugby Union Player
• Reni Maitua Rugby League Footballer
• Jack Brabham Racing Car Driver (added by webmaster)

View the full article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvania,_New_South_Wales