Fifth Stop: Macquarie Fields

It's hard to believe that anything particularly exciting happens in Macquarie Fields. Stepping off the train, you find yourself in the midst of a semi-rural area, with paddocks lining the side of the tracks. The properties are large, the roads sometimes unpaved, and offroad vehicles that actually get taken off road are the norm.

So far on this Sydney sojourn I've been lucky to find that most of the interesting places to visit in a given community are centred on the railway station, which seems consistant with the pattern of growth these places experienced. Not so, Macquarie Fields. It took me the best part of an hour of trudging through parkland, alongside roads and along a creek before I came to the heart of the 'burb: a leisure centre on one side, and a football ground on the other (AFL, interestingly). Nearby was a primary school whose students were back for the first day of a new term. All this seemed remarkably ordinary and neat, a far cry from the public housing hellhole I had been led to believe existed at Macquarie Fields.



Finally I settled down at a fish and chip shop to induldge in some potato cakes scallops and a decent Greek salad. As I devoured my Coronary Special, I flicked through the local paper, the Macarthur Chronicle, which fills its pages with a diet consisting exclusively of local criminals and local whingers (often about the local criminals).

It was only on my meander back to the station that I saw the darker side to Macquarie Fields. Just to the north of the station was an abandoned house which had suffered quite severe vandalism, to the point that the windows were shattered, rubbish was strewn and the walls complete with holes. It was an ugly eyesore, but was outnumbered by a factor of ten by properties in the area that were being built or renovated.