Reflections on twenty one years of Berowra locality

 

 

 

Reflections on twenty one years of Berowra locality 

Immigrant stories are many. Ours, while not spectacular certainly has a few constants and reoccurring themes within it. It also seems to echo much of the received knowledge of what migrants do when they arrive in a new place. Perhaps the most regular theme  is our association with Berowra and in particular the area around the old La Mancha Caravan Park. It is often said that  migrants tend to settle very close the original place where they arrive in the country. In our case the point is very relevant because we now live just 200 metres, as the crow flies, from the very first place we started out in Australia twenty one years ago!

Arrival

Leaving London as immigrants in March 1992 the main contact we had in Sydney Australia was Terries brother John Cassidy. In what was a life changing shift, he gave us some great advice in what to do as newcomers arriving in Sydney. John and his family lived in Hornsby, so it was quite natural for him to give local knowledge on where to start. Terrie, myself and our two young children, Dan 3 and Cassie 18 months, would require somewhere to rent. While Sydney, like London was in the throes of recession in 92' it was still an expensive place to live as the prime destination for immigrants.

Caravan Park start

What John suggested was that rather than rent a house when we arrived, it would be more sensible to take a twelve week contract on a local caravan park while we got an idea of what and where we wanted to  settle. This would help us avoid locking ourselves in for a year somewhere we might not like. At the time there were three main options in terms of caravan parks. One up in Ryde which was the closest to urban Sydney, a second up on Mona Vale Road, relatively close to the northern beaches and a third up in the north at Berowra which was surrounded by bush. As it turned out John chose the third option for us and we started off at La Mancha Caravan Park, just as you come along the Pacific Highway and enter Berowra. This choice made by John unwittingly shaped our future life and direction in Australia. Largely because I'm sure that urban Ryde would have been closest in lifestyle to central London where we came from, while Mona Vale would have directed us down the 'beach lifestyle' route.  Berowra, surrounded, by bush was much more like living in the 'country' to us Londoners.

La Mancha Caravan Park Berowra

 

La Mancha was an old established caravan park from 1973, housing a mixture of resident types. 

Some 43 were permanent people living in mobile homes fixed on the site. Others were holiday makers either towing vans or booking a few days while traveling through. We came under a third group who stayed for a few months on a short term contract in one of the furnished cabins on the site. Altogether La Mancha could house up to one hundred or so non-permanent vans in addition the cabins and 'permanent' mobile homes.

Arial view of a La Mancha / Illoura, Berowra

 

La Mancha

 

I still remember being driven by John up along the dark Pacific Highway along the sweeping road that eventually enters Berowra....La Mancha is immediately at the top of the hill on the left. The sizeable site actually being at one of the highest points in Sydney perched, surrounded by and overlooking large tracts of bushland. When we arrived on the evening of 18th March 1992 we were met and shown by the site owners to a small cabin with a double bed, a set of bunk beds and a small kitchen / dining area. I also clearly remember that evening standing with Terrie looking out over the Berowra valley with houses below and an unfamiliar star filled sky. Immediate thoughts were. 'what have we done?' Here we were, in an unknown place with two young children and we had no jobs!

Dan and Cass 1st week at La Mancha March 92'

As I've said many times to others my experience of being an immigrant was one where you had a raised sense of urgency and awareness. You are driven by a mixture adrenaline and fear. The twelve weeks we had up at La Mancha provided us with experiences and contacts that have stayed with us for the following twenty one years. There were many young families on the site, Kiwi's Neville and Kerry, Scottish Joe and his wife Chris being just a few. All the kids played out the front and in the rough and ready swing park across the way. The cabins were toward the middle of the site while the more permanent mobile homes were on the outside of the perimeter pathway. The caravan park was also known for it's multiple squash courts.

Berowra network / football

The site did have a small store but we tended to walk down along the highway to the BP petrol garage because it had a wider range of supplies. Fatefully it was in this place that in the first week since our arrival I saw a small note displayed advertising 'Over 30's football players wanted'....come to Berowra Oval.....Well it is certainly true that finding familiar things / activities helps people settle in new places and this was an opportunity to do just that. It is true to say our time in Australia was shaped in many ways by going to the oval that night and meeting up with other prospective Over 30's footballers. In the event I met three Englishmen,, Colin Strang and brothers John and Jimmy Everitt. These guys remain some of our closest friends even now in 2014! For me it was sport connection but also for Terrie in making initial friends in Berowra and also securing several of her first jobs. There she was stuck on the caravan park with two youngsters on what emerged as one of the wettest months Sydney had seen in years. Colin's wife Bernie is part of a large Dublin family of which six of the brothers and sisters lived in the area. In that first week Bernie invited Terrie and the kids on a barbeque with other Berowra people including another Englishman Paul Squires. Paul was to give Terrie her first job. This external relief of meeting other families was great for an immigrant couple with few Australian contacts. Eight percent of Berowra residents are originally from Britain /Ireland and we fell right into the ex-pat network in the town.

Finding work

La Mancha was a safe place to start our immigrant life but although I had been accepted as a High School teacher the actual work had to be found by myself. In the first few days I took the scatter gun approach to job applications...not really knowing where the schools were in NSW just sending out as many CV's a s possible. In addition I went in person to schools in Sydney to hand in resumes. One in particular was to play a large part later in my life. It was a catholic school in Chatswood which had the seemingly strange name of ST PLUS! At the time I just thought it was some particular Australian Saints name....not realising I had misread it from the actual St Pius (where I have now worked for 17 years!) Waiting for approval for State schools actually took me many months but fortunately I'd  previously worked in Catholic schools and they sorted out my paperwork in just three hours!
Initially, it was my task each morning to go down to the solitary Caravan park call box to phone some local schools to seek casual work on a day to day basis. I'm not sure why, but a particular Deputy out at Mater Maria College Warriewood must have taken pity on me. One rainy day at 8.00am he said to me "How quickly can you get here?" I plucked 30 minutes from somewhere in my head and promised to be there in no time. Well Warriewood is at least 45 minutes from Berowra and I drove (what turned out to be a very iffy Mazda) in driving rain to get there. The School Deputy, Andy Martin was a gruff northerner who must have somehow recognised desperation in my voice. He brought me in to help minimize a potential disaster at Mater Maria....it was the day of their School fete, many staff were away and it was pelting with rain. Andy placed me in charge of 30 odd year 12 students and just asked me to keep them out of trouble as the rainy day threatened to descend into soggy farce.

Mater Maria College, Warriewood



The college itself was in lovely surrounds overlooking the sea....I honestly felt that I had walked into set from Home & Away. Surviving that first day I had obviously impressed Andy because he brought me in regularly in the next 2 months. Eight o'clock each morning I'd get on the La Mancha pay-phone to ask if I was needed and if so, drive like a lunatic to get there before 8.45.

Where next ? Berowra soon.....

We stayed on La Mancha for 12 weeks in all but were unable to find a house to rent in Berowra and had to go elsewhere for 7 months to a rented house at Normanhurst. Regardless, our precious initial contacts had been made in Berowra and soon we were able move back to a place in Berowra Heights at Woodcourt Road. Again we stayed for  7 months there before moving on again across Berowra to our own place in 1993 in Yallambee Road....a small redbrick house which was the existing property in a sub-division. We stayed there for seven years before buying a newer larger place at Helvetia Avenue in 2001 which was a street just down below the old caravan park at La Mancha!
Living near where we started was certainly a reminder of how far we had come in Australia...only a couple of hundred metres but oh so far :)

Closure of La Mancha

Sadly, Berowra was like so many other places and under pressure for development. In 2003 La Mancha closed down and was sold off for private housing development. A report on why Caravan Parks were tending to disappear revealed that at La Mancha the arithmetic was as follows.

As a caravan park             = $130 x 125 x 52 =$845,000 per annum
As a housing subdivision = $510,000 houses x 33 = $16,830,000

http://www.unsworks.unsw.edu.au/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?vid=UNSWORKS&docId=unsworks_4490&fromSitemap=1&afterPDS=true

Illoura Estate

Masterbuilt the builders, took advantage of existing planning permission to close the La Mancha site down and build big new houses. As nearby residents of Helvetia Avenue we received all of the plans and in truth the development looked to be well set out....we made no objection to what would eventually be 60 homes on the multi-acre site. As fate would have it serious bush fires in the area meant that it became tougher to meet building regulations in what was a 'fire zone'. Masterbuilt changed their plan to take account of the new 50 metre fire exclusion zone around the site.

 

In order to still get their money it was decided to add a number of four story units to the development. This in our mind altered the plan in an unacceptable way. Berowra is a bush suburb and surely didn't need multi-story  buildings dominating the area...being in a high up area they would be seen right across the city!

 The road on Illoura where our cabin stood in 1992

Gateway to the modern Illoura Development, Berowra

 

Battle for the right Illoura

In the event Terrie and I got together with our next door neighbours to fight the plan. We collected several thousand signatures locally and presented the petition to the council. Now while State Government needs to meet its ongoing 'medium density' housing commitments the development still had to be appropriate. To us multi storey units were not for Berowra...they were 1 1/2 km from the station in a bush setting. As is often the way the local council feels pressured by developers. We forced the issue to a Hornsby Council meeting. Their position was that even if they voted against the proposal Masterbuilt would appeal to the Land & Environment court and win. Well at a packed public meeting we won the vote and eventually Hornsby went on to defeat the appeal as well! The plan for redevelopment at La Mancha was to be a 60 House estate called Illoura. No building was over two stories and all the houses were to be free standing with Torrens title. Community features would include an tennis court, a swimming pool, bike track and environmental works which included a wind mill. This work started in 2007.

                                           Looking down from the modern Illoura to our Helvetia Avenue house

 

                                                                  Looking up from  our Helvetia Avenue house to Illoura /La Mancha

The future is the past is the future

Now six years later fate has again intervened for us as earlier this year we actually purchased a house on Illoura through our superannuation to rent out! Hopefully, when eventually retire we plan to move up to that house on Illoura. Our life in Australia seems to have gone almost full circle. In our time here our story has revolved largely around Berowra but more particularly around La Mancha / Illoura. That original cabin, our Helvetia Avenue home and the new Illoura property make up a triangle with sides of no more than several hundred metres! We certainly fit the profile of what immigrants do in a new country in terms of settlement.

http://www.washingtonbrown.com.au/documents/news/thebill01.pdf