Bulletin no 4 of 1990
A hospital, prison or library?

Benledi House at the corner of Wigram Rd and Glebe Point Rd housed the Homoeopathic Hospital from 1915 until it was closed by the Area Health Service in 1989. Despite its name, it operated mostly as a small cottage hospital, homoeopathic treatment there having effectively ended by 19451.

Plans to turn the site into a half-way house for women leaving prison attracted much resident opposition and it was instead acquired by Leichhardt Council for a new Glebe Library. The idea of a cooperative hospital or multi-purpose centre did not get off the ground. 

1.http://www.historyofhomeopathy.com.au/hospitals/item/194-sydney-homopathic-hospital.html

Bulletin no 1 of 1995
‘Wentworth Park’

Bulletin no 1 of 1998
‘Report from Councillor Macindoe’ (extract)

Bulletin no 2 of 1998
‘Sydney airport(s)’

The Society put in a submission on the 1998 draft EIS for Badgerys Creek Airport, noting that it was about the twelfth submission it had made to relevant authorities on the subject of Sydney airports since 1989. The Society argued for the building of a second Sydney airport, also for protection of water quality in Warragamba Dam, rail access from the start and noise buffering at Badgerys Creek. The federal government’s go-ahead eventually occurred in 2014.

Bulletin no 3 of 1998
‘A Glebe Ferry (again)’

The proposed Boat Day was intended to enable a commentary on the Glebe foreshores and to look at what impediments existed to a foreshores walkway. At the time only parts of the foreshore were accessible to the public.

‘Light Rail’The first stage of the light rail to Wentworth Park opened in 1997, extended through Glebe to Lilyfield in 2000 and to Dulwich Hill in 2014. Circular Quay next year, maybe.

Bulletin no 5 of 1998
‘Another case of a Clayton’s public consultation?’

It’s an overworn phrase, but ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. This report by Collin Hills of a State Government Bays Precinct consultation was made 20 years ago and reads as though it was written today.

Not only has State Government continued to conduct ‘Clayton’s consultations’, but Collin’s optimism that certain State Government promises would be kept was, we now know, misplaced.

These promises, made at the consultation, were: 1. that the plans for a huge marina in Rozelle Bay are ‘dead’, and 2. there will be no concrete batching plant under the (now) Anzac Bridge.

Perhaps a bit more ‘doom and gloom’ would have been warranted!

  

‘4WDs in the Park?’

Bulletin no 6 of 1998
‘Progressive Dinner’


Isn’t it time we brought back the ‘progressive dinner’?

Bulletin no 8 of 1998
‘Tranby Aboriginal Co-Operative College’


Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education & Training celebrated its 60th Birthday last year. It is one of the special and unique institutions of Glebe, ‘a place of reform, social change and social impact for Aboriginal Australians’. This article reported on its 1998 Open Day.

Bulletin no 9 of 1998
A bus to the airport

For a brief period, Glebe had a public bus direct to the airport. Sadly, it no longer operates.

Bulletin no 10 of 1998
‘The boxing gloves outside Gleebooks’

The artwork is no longer there, and has been replaced by a hardier memorial:

Current tribute to Lamings Golden Gloves Gym outside Gleebooks (image: Phil Young)

David Gaunt from Gleebooks, in response to an email from the Bulletin editor, sheds some light on the removal of the artwork:

Sad story this one. Great idea to commemorate Laming’s “golden glove” gym, but the memento proved an irresistible to local (well, we assumed local) youth. The challenge to break the glass (God knows how many times Council replaced and strengthened it) meant that the glass was broken or shattered so many times that eventually Council gave up, and took them away. For the life of me I can’t remember what they did with them, but they were just gold-sprayed gloves, so no intrinsic value. Anyway, I confess to relief once they were gone, since we sometimes lost our front window to an overly enthusiastic sledge-hammerer!

We could write a fair old history of happenings in our small neck of the woods, since 1975.

It’s a few years ago now, I’d guess not long after the great 2008 street renovation (which was a magnificent renewal of essential infrastructure, but from which disruption way too many businesses never recovered).