Warrawee is a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

on the

Upper North Shore The North Shore is a region within Northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, generally referring to suburbs located on the northern side of Sydney Harbour up to Wahroonga, and suburbs between Middle Harbour and the Lane Cove ...

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Warrawee is located 17 kilometres north-west of the

Sydney Central Business District The Sydney central business district (CBD) is the historical and main Central business district, commercial centre of Sydney. The CBD is Sydney's city centre, or Sydney City, and the two terms are used interchangeably. Colloquially, the CBD or c ...

in the

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a State (administrative division), state, province, divi ...

of Ku-ring-gai Council. Warrawee is predominantly a small residential suburb with few commercial entities. Notably, its railway station provides no commercial activity which is uncommon in the Sydney train network. This should not be confused with Wirawee, the fictional small country town in the

Tomorrow series The ''Tomorrow'' series is a series of seven young adult invasion novels written by Australian writer John Marsden, detailing the invasion and occupation of Australia by a foreign power. The novels are related from the first-person perspectiv ...

of books for young people by John Marsden and the film derived from the first book, '' Tomorrow when the war began''.

History

Warrawee is believed to have come from an

Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...

word meaning ''rest a while'', ''stop here'' or ''to stand''. The suburb is rich in architectural history, with a number of houses designed by prominent architects. The earliest significant homes were ''Pibrac'' (1888), ''Cheddington'' (1890) and ''Wirepe'' (1893), all very fine houses. In 1888, the public servant and patron of exploration Frederick Ecclestone du Faur built his house ''Pibrac'' in Pibrac Avenue. The house was designed by John Horbury Hunt, a Canadian architect who settled in Australia and favoured the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

style, as well as the North American Shingle style, which he introduced to Australia. Later alterations were carried out by B.J. Waterhouse. The house is composed predominantly of timber, with extensive use of timber shingles, on a sandstone base. It is considered a good example of Hunt's work and is listed on the

Register of the National Estate The Register of the National Estate was a heritage register that listed natural and cultural heritage places in Australia that was closed in 2007. Phasing out began in 2003, when the Australian National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritag ...

. ''Cheddington'', the oldest home in established Hastings Road, is also attributed to Horbury Hunt, of brick and slate, with characteristic shingling. ''Wirepe'', designed by M.B. Halligan for architect Walter Traill, used deep verandahs and high ceilings to elicit a homestead atmosphere, with fine corbelled chimneys and cedar shingles. The brickwork is of Colonial Bond design, and the house sits at the heart of the Ku-ring-gai heritage precinct on Hastings Road. ''Upton Grey'' (now ''Kooyong'') was built in 1894 to a John Sulman design; its English features are a local landmark. Across the century it has served as a government social services home, a CSIRO field station, and a boarding house for Knox Grammar School. It is now in private hands and retains features replicated at Sulman's important ''Ingleholme''. "Exley House" at Finlay Road Warrawee, was designed by Harry Seidler in 1957 for Cecil Exley – an engineer with the Sydney Water Board – and his wife. The three bedrooms, two bathroom home is the only red-brick single storey dwelling that Harry Seidler ever designed and the only one still in its original condition. As all North Shore suburbs with aboriginal names, Warrawee was the name of a railway station which became attached to the surrounding suburb. Warrawee had developed in the 1900s as an exclusive residential district with no shops, offices, post office, public school, churches or through roads.Paul Davis, November 2010, ''Kuring-Gai Potential Heritage Conservation Areas North Review'
"HCA 23 – Warrawee"
retrieved 16 April 2012. All the blocks were kept to between one and four acres and the form of houses tightly controlled. See especially p. 27. Joseph Beresford Grant used his money to guarantee the exclusiveness of the development, and also ensured that there were no shops around the area.

Transport

The Pacific Highway is the main arterial road.

Warrawee railway station Warrawee railway station is located on the North Shore line, serving the Sydney suburb of Warrawee. It is served by Sydney Trains Sydney Trains is the operator of the suburban passenger rail network serving the city of Sydney, New South ...

is on the

North Shore & Western Line The North Shore & Western Line (numbered T1, coloured orange) is a commuter rail line operated by Sydney Trains in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It serves the North Shore, parts of the Inner West and Western Suburbs. It was previously t ...

of the Sydney Trains network. The railway station built in 1900 was the last one built on the North Shore Line before it was extended to North Sydney. Local residents had to fight the railway commissioners for a railway station, that is only one kilometre from Wahroonga. At the , 27% of employed people travelled to work on public transport compared to 10% average for all of Australia, while 51% travelled by car (either as driver or as passenger) compared to 67% nationally.

Demographics

At the , the suburb of Warrawee recorded a population of 2,995 people. Of these: *Age distribution: The median age of Warrawee residents was 41 years. Children aged under 15 years made up 18.6% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 15.5% of the population. *Ethnic diversity: More than half (60.9%) of residents were born in Australia, compared to the national average of 66.7%; the next most common countries of birth were England 7%, China 5.6%, South Africa 2.9%, Korea 2.6% and India 2.2%. The most common ancestries in Warrawee were English 27.8%, Australian 19.8%, Chinese 8.9%, Scottish 8.1% and Irish 7.8%. *Finances: The median weekly household income was $3,085, more than double the national median of $1,438. Real estate values were correspondingly high: the median monthly mortgage repayments were $3,000 compared to the national median of $1,755. ; Housing : The majority (84.6%) of private dwellings were family households, 13.7% were single person households and 1.6% were group households. Separate houses accounted for 70.2% of dwellings, while 29.8% were flats or apartments and less than 0.0% were semi-detached. CC-BY icon

This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under th
Attribution 2.5 Australia (CC BY 2.5 AU)
license.

Schools

Warrawee Public School is a primary school situated about 0.5 kilometres to the south of the station in Turramurra, on the Pacific Highway. According to the school's website, it was established in 1906. Knox Grammar School is predominately in the suburb of Warrawee, and sits no more than 200m from

. The school lists its address as Wahroonga since the Administration Office is situated within that suburb.

Notable residents

* Joseph Beresford Grant (1877–1942), developer and investor in Warrawee as an exclusive residential area. He lived from 1913 in Rowerdennan, Warrawee Avenue. * Eleanor Cullis-Hill (1913–2001), architect and daughter of Joseph Beresford Grant * Sir

Charles Mackellar Sir Charles Kinnaird Mackellar (5 December 184414 July 1926) was an Australian politician and surgeon. He served in the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1885 to 1925, with the exception of a period of 50 days in 1903 when he filled a C ...

and his daughter, poet Dorothea Mackellar *

Olive Fitzhardinge Olive Fitzhardinge (1881–1956) was an Australian rose breeder, the first to patent her work. Her four surviving roses are held in Australian collections. Her roses were well received in the 1930s but after the Second World War favoured s ...

, resident 1917–1937, breeder of the rose 'Warrawee' especially, lived with Dr Fitzhardinge at Bridge End, 1 Warrawee Avenue. * Kandiah Kamalesvaran known as Kamahl, singer * Sir John Seymour Proud (1907–1997)

References

*http://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004777b.htm

External links

* CC-By-SA">Creative_Commons_license.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Creative Commons license">CC-By-SA/nowiki> {{Sydney Ku-ring-gai suburbs Suburbs of Sydney Ku-ring-gai Council