Waverley Council is a
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 ...
in the
eastern suburbs Eastern Suburbs may refer to:
Places
*Eastern Suburbs (Mumbai), India
*Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Australia
**Eastern Suburbs railway line, Sydney, Australia
Sports clubs
;Association football
*Eastern Suburbs AFC, Auckland, New Zealand
* Eastern ...
of
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
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. First incorporated on 16 June 1859 as the Municipality of Waverley, it is one of the oldest-surviving local government areas in New South Wales. Waverley is bounded by the
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abe ...
to the east, the
Municipality of Woollahra
Woollahra Municipal Council (or Woollahra Council) is a Local government in Australia, local government area in the Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), eastern suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is bounded by Port J ...
to the north, and the
City of Randwick
The City of Randwick is a local government area in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Established in 1859, Randwick is the second-oldest local government area in New South Wales, after the City of Sydney. It comprises an ...
in the south and west. The administrative centre of Waverley Council is located on Bondi Road in
Bondi Junction
Bondi Junction is an eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 6 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of Waverley.
Bondi Junction is a largely comme ...
in the Council Chambers on the corner of Waverley Park.
The elected Waverley Council is composed of twelve
Councillors
A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries.
Canada
Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...
elected proportionally across four
wards
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...
, each electing three Councillors, and the most recent election was held on 4 December 2021. The current
Mayor
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...
of Waverley Council since September 2019 is Councillor Paula Masselos of Lawson Ward, a member of the
Labor Party.
Suburbs and localities in the local government area
Suburbs within Waverley Council are:
History
![Bondi Beach and Ben Buckler looking North - 1937 (15378710184)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Bondi_Beach_and_Ben_Buckler_looking_North_-_1937_%2815378710184%29.png)
With the enactment of the ''Municipalities Act of 1858'', which allowed for the creation of Municipalities for areas with over 500 electors, several petitions calling for the incorporation of the Waverley area were received by the Colonial Government and published in ''
New South Wales Government Gazette
The ''Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales'', also known as the ''New South Wales Government Gazette'', is the government gazette of the Government of New South Wales in Australia. The ''Gazette'' is managed by the New South Wales ...
'' on 11 November 1858 and 17 May 1859.
One of the earliest meetings of local residents formed to call for a "Municipality of Waverley" was held at the Tea Gardens Hotel on Bronte Road on 20 December 1858.
The
Governor of New South Wales
The governor of New South Wales is the viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, King Charles III, in the state of New South Wales. In an analogous way to the governor-general of Australia at the national level, the governors of the ...
approved the proclamation establishing the Municipality of Waverley on 13 June 1859, and it was subsequently published in the ''Government Gazette'' on 16 June 1859. The first returning officer,
Charles St Julian
Charles James Herbert de Courcy St Julian (10 May 1819 – 26 November 1874) was a journalist, newspaper owner-editor and the first Chief Justice of Fiji.
St Julian's obituary records that he was born in France but other sources suggest London ...
, was appointed to conduct the first meeting of electors a few days later. The first election was held on 14 July 1859, with nine Councillors elected proportionately, and the Council first met on 23 July 1859 at the Tea Gardens Hotel, with John Birrell elected as the first chairman.
On 21 February 1860, the council was divided into three
wards
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...
electing three councillors each: Waverley Ward, Bondi Ward and Nelson Ward. A fourth ward covering the western corner of Waverley,
Lawson Ward, was added on 22 April 1887, thereby bringing the number of aldermen to 12.
On 6 October 1944, the recommendation of a 1941 NSW Local Government Department Commission of Inquiry removing the Mill Hill area (37 acres) from the
Municipality of Randwick and include it in the Waverley Municipality was proclaimed in the ''Government Gazette''.
Council Chambers
The first Council meeting was held on 16 June 1859, but there was no permanent office for the conduct of Council duties some early meetings were held in the Charing Cross Hotel and others in the old School of Arts building in Bronte Road. In December 1860 the Council accepted an offer from Francis O'Brien to donate a site for a Council Chambers in Bondi Road. The cost of building was to be limited to £500, although approximately £700 was eventually spent. The foundation stone was laid in 1861, and a first meeting of Council was held there on 21 November 1861, the first Council building erected by any municipality under the Municipalities Act of 1858.
Discussions were held during the early 1900s over the need for new Council Chambers, and in 1913 a portion of the north-west corner of Waverley Park, which was the first public park in Waverley gazetted in 1880, was dedicated as the site for a new building. A report of the same year stated that the original building was too small for the staff, and had poor ventilation and lighting. It was later sold for £1,600. The new building was completed by the end of 1913, and on 6 January 1914 the Council met for the first time in the new chambers.
Parts of the 1913 chambers still form the shell of the present Council Chambers, although extensive alterations in 1962, and further development in 1976 and 1977 have altered its appearance considerably.
2016–17 amalgamation proposals
A
2015 review of local government boundaries recommended that the Municipality of Waverley merge with the
Woollahra
Woollahra is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located 5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. W ...
and
Randwick councils to form a new council with an area of and support a population of approximately . Following an independent review, in May 2016 the NSW Government sought to dismiss the council and force its amalgamation with Woollahra and Randwick councils. Woollahra Council instigated legal action claiming that there was procedural unfairness and that a
KPMG
KPMG International Limited (or simply KPMG) is a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations.
Headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands, although incorporated in London, England, KPMG is a net ...
report at the centre of merger proposals had been "misleading". The matter was heard before the
NSW Court of Appeal
The New South Wales Court of Appeal, part of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, is the highest court for civil matters and has appellate jurisdiction in the Australian state of New South Wales.
Jurisdiction
The Court of Appeal operates pursu ...
who, in December 2016, unanimously dismissed Woollahra Council's appeal, finding no merit in its arguments that the proposed merger with Waverley and Randwick councils was invalid. In July 2017, the
Berejiklian government decided to abandon the forced merger of the Woollahra, Waverley and Randwick local government areas, along with several other proposed forced mergers.
Demographics
![Bondi Beach](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Bondi_Beach.jpg)
![Dover Heights cliff-top homes (Sydney, Australia)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Dover_Heights_cliff-top_homes_%28Sydney%2C_Australia%29.png)
At the , there were people in Waverley, of these 49.2% were male and 50.8% were female.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of ...
made up 0.4% of the population. The
median
In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...
age of people in Waverley Council was 35 years. Children aged 0 – 14 years made up 15.4% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 12.0% of the population. Of people in the area aged 15 years and over, 37.4% were married and 10.0% were either divorced or separated.
Population growth in Waverley Council between the 2001 Census and the 2006 Census was 3.31%; and in the subsequent five years to the 2011 Census, population growth was 4.57%. When compared with total population growth of Australia for the same periods, being 5.78% and 8.32% respectively, population growth in the Waverley local government area was a little over half the national average.
The median
weekly income for residents within the Municipality of Waverley was more than 1.5 times the national average.
The proportion of residents in Waverley who stated their
ancestry
An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...
was
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
was three times the New South Wales and national averages. The proportion of households where
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
is spoken at home is thirteen times the state and national averages; and of all households where
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
is spoken in New South Wales, one third are located in Waverley, and in Australia, one tenth of households where Hebrew is spoken are located in Waverley. The proportion of residents who stated an affiliation with
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
was in excess of twenty–eight times the state and national averages.
Council
![Waverleycouncilchambersbondijunctionnsw](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Waverleycouncilchambersbondijunctionnsw.jpg)
NSW Local Government Elections are held every four years on the second Saturday of September as stipulated by the ''Local Government Act 1993''.
Current composition and election method
Waverley Council is composed of twelve
Councillor
A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries.
Canada
Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...
s elected
proportionally from the four separate
wards
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...
, each electing three Councillors. The
Mayor
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...
is elected by the Councillors at the first meeting of the council for a two-year term, typically in September, while the Deputy Mayor is elected annually by the councillors. The most recent election for the council was held on 4 December 2021, and the makeup of the council is as follows:
![Australia Waverley Council 2017](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Australia_Waverley_Council_2017.svg)
The current Council, elected in 2021, in order of election by ward, is:
Mayors
Town Clerks and General Managers
![1 Bronte House1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/1_Bronte_House1.jpg)
Heritage listings
The Waverley Council area has a number of heritage-listed items and conservation areas, including those listed on the
New South Wales State Heritage Register
The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...
:
* Bondi, 36 Anglesea Street:
Electricity Substation No. 269
* Bondi, Blair Street:
Bondi Ocean Outfall Sewer
The Bondi Ocean Outfall Sewer is a heritage-listed sewerage infrastructure at Blair Street, North Bondi, Sydney, Australia. The sewer line commences at the intersection of Oxford Street and College Street in Darlinghurst and then travels in ...
* Bondi, 60 Blair Street:
St Anne's Catholic Church, Bondi
St Anne's Church is a heritage-listed Roman Catholic church located at 60 Blair Street, North Bondi, Waverley Municipality, New South Wales, Australia. The church was designed by Joseph Fowell and Kenneth McConnel, and built from 1934 to 1964 b ...
* Bondi, Military Road:
Bondi Sewer Vent
The Bondi Sewer Vent is a heritage-listed sewer vent shaft located at Military Road, North Bondi, Waverley Municipality, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by the Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage. It is also known as ...
* Bondi Beach, Queen Elizabeth Drive:
Bondi Beach Cultural Landscape
The Bondi Beach Cultural Landscape is a heritage-listed former Turkish baths, pavilion with dressing cubicles, dining rooms, sunbaking, shops and ballroom and now art gallery, pavilion, theatre and open air cinema located at Queen Elizabeth D ...
* Bondi Junction and Waverley, Paul Street:
Waverley Reservoirs
The Waverley Reservoirs are four reservoirs, of which two are heritage-listed, located at Paul Street, Bondi Junction, Waverley Municipality, New South Wales, Australia. They were designed and built by the Public Works Department. The property ...
* Bronte, 470 Bronte Road:
Bronte House
Bronte House is a heritage-listed historic house and visitor attraction located at 470 Bronte Road, Bronte, Waverley Municipality, New South Wales, Australia. Built in the Australian Gothic Revival style, the house was designed by Georgiana & ...
* Bronte, St Thomas Street:
Waverley Cemetery
The Waverley Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery on top of the cliffs at Bronte in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Opened in 1877 and built by R. Watkins (cemetery lodge, 1878) and P. Beddie (cemetery office, 1915 ...
* North Bondi,
Ben Buckler Gun Battery
The Ben Buckler Gun Battery is a heritage-listed fortified former gun emplacement and military installation of the late-Victorian period and now public open space located in the locality of Ben Buckler, in the Waverley Municipality of Sydney ...
* Vaucluse, 793 Old South Head Road:
South Head General Cemetery
The South Head General Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery located at 793 Old South Head Road, Vaucluse, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1845 to 1950. It is also known as Old South Head Cemetery and the South Head Cemetery. T ...
* Waverley, 240 Birrell Street:
St Mary's Anglican Church, Waverley
St Mary's Anglican Church is a heritage-listed Anglican church and associated facilities located at 240 Birrell Street, Waverley, in the Waverley Municipality, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The church was designed by Edmund Blacket and bu ...
* Waverley, 11 Victoria Street:
Charing Cross (homestead)
Charing Cross is a heritage-listed former homestead and former pre-school and now house and childcare centre at 11 Victoria Street, Queens Park, Waverley Municipality, New South Wales, Australia. It was built during 1860 and was added to the N ...
* Waverley, 45 Victoria Street:
Mary Immaculate Catholic Church, Waverley
The Nib Literary Award
The
Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, formerly The Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature, is organised and supported by the council, and the awards ceremony held in Waverley Library each year.
References
External links
Waverley Council website
{{Local Government Areas of New South Wales
Waverley Waverley may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Waverley'' (novel), by Sir Walter Scott
** ''Waverley'' Overture, a work by Hector Berlioz inspired by Scott's novel
* Waverley Harrison, a character in the New Zealand soap opera ''Shortland Stree ...
1859 establishments in Australia
Lists of local government leaders of places in New South Wales
*