Strawberry Hills, Surry Hills

G’day, Charles Touma here, and today I’m live from Touma Group headquarters, to talk about an area known as Strawberry Hills in the fantastic suburb of Surry Hills. Now this area has an artistic vibe, being the home of Opera Australia on Elizabeth Street, as well as several live entertainment venues such as the Strawberry Hills Hotel and the Belvoir Street Theatre. Yet when the area we know as Surry Hills was granted to the First Fleet purser, John Palmer, as part of a huge parcel of land that I talked about last week, it was a huge sand hill, held together by a forest of native trees. After Palmer got in financial trouble, forcing him to sell off the land, Thomas Horton bought this area and subdivided it as the Strawberry Hills Estate in 1832, but it was difficult to sell at the time. In 1838, new legislation was passed, called the Building Act, which banned the construction of timber houses within the CBD. However, Surry Hills was considered outside the city. Many builders, built timber properties here instead.

In 1842 John Hilly bought a large parcel, of the Strawberry Hills Estate and subdivided it. There’s very little information around the subdivision, but did you know, Surry Hills used to have a world class velodrome? It was built in Strawberry Hills in 1937, and named the Sydney Sports Arena. It was built from the timber boards that had been dismantled from the velodrome in Canterbury. The 200 metre, 55 degree banked track was built on a piece of land bounded by Riley, Goulburn, Pelican and Waine Streets, and attracted international competition, as well as massive crowds. In the 1940s, the area bounded by Devonshire, Marlborough, Lansdowne and Belvoir Streets, was considered too densely populated, having 241 houses and 21 businesses. So this area was gradually cleared to make way for the 15-story John Northcott Place, named after the NSW Governor, opened by the Queen in 1963.

In 1963 the council bought the piece of land, that is now called Eddie Ward Park, for 112,969 pounds. Now I’ve been selling real estate in Surry Hills and Redfern for over 20 years, and I’ve sold many properties including, 17 Ridge Street in Surry Hills, which we sold in January for just over $2.5 million. And one of the buyers that missed out on that one, we shortly sold 54 Ridge Street to them, and that property sold for a whopping $2.8+ million. So that’s a quick dive into how The Strawberry Hills area evolved. There’s so much that has been forgotten about this area. I’m sure most locals didn’t know there used to be a velodrome here. Now once again, my name’s Charles Touma. My office door’s on Thurlow Street, is always open for you to come in and have a chat.