HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Bondi Junction is an eastern suburb of
Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
, in the state of
New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
, Australia. It is 6 kilometres east 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 ...
and is part of 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 federated state, state, province, division (politica ...
of Waverley. Bondi Junction is a largely commercial area which has undergone many changes since the late 20th century. There have been many major commercial and residential developments around the main street and surrounding area, notably a new bus/rail interchange and large shopping mall. Many of the original pubs have been maintained, notably, the Nelson Hotel, so named because of its location on Nelson Street.
Bondi Beach Bondi Beach () is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Bondi Beach is located east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, local government area of ...
is a neighbouring suburb to the east with its namesake beach. Similarly named Bondi and
North Bondi North Bondi is a coastal, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council. North Bondi is a mostly residential ar ...
are also neighbouring suburbs. Bondi Junction and the neighbouring area is well known for its famous
rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
team, the
Sydney Roosters Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club, known as the Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs. The club competes in the National Rugby Lea ...
, still officially known as the Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club.


History


Pre-colonial times and name origin

Before the arrival of Europeans in the
Port Jackson Port Jackson, commonly known as Sydney Harbour, is a natural harbour on the east coast of Australia, around which Sydney was built. It consists of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta ...
area, the Waverley and Bondi areas were inhabited for tens of thousands of years by
Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...
peoples, who left evidence of their habitation in the form of paths, rock carvings, artefacts, and shelters. The eastern beaches were home to the
Bidjigal The Bidjigal (also spelt Bediagal, Bejigal, Bedegal or Biddegal) people are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are modern-day western, north-western, south-eastern, and southern Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia. The ...
, Birrabirragal, and Gadigal people. The name "Bondi" is derived from the Dharawal language, spoken by the Aboriginal clans who lived further from
Sydney Harbour Port Jackson, commonly known as Sydney Harbour, is a ria, natural harbour on the east coast of Australia, around which Sydney was built. It consists of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove River, Lane ...
southwards to Shoalhaven. The word ''Bondi'', also spelt ''Bundi'', ''Bundye'', and ''Boondye'', originates from the word for a loud thud, such as the sound of waves breaking over rocks, but is also associated with '' nulla nulla'', or fighting sticks, which make a loud noise when they hit something.


19th century

The first house in the area was Waverley House, which was built by Barnett Levey in 1827, on the current site of Waverley Street. The house changed hands many times over the years before finally being demolished in 1904. When Waverley Municipality was proclaimed in 1859, the name was taken from Waverley House. Henry Hough was first given a grant of land on the present site of Bondi Junction in 1832. On his estate, he built a wind-powered flour mill. This was accessed by a track leading off the South Head Road (now
Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road via Oxford Circus. It marks the notional boundary between the areas of Fitzrovia and Marylebone to t ...
), the suburb's main thoroughfare. In 1854, the first hotel in the area opened, licensed to Alexander Gray. It was named "The Waverley Tea Gardens", and the surrounding area quickly took that name, quickly shortened to simply "Tea Gardens", which stuck for the next 30 years, before being named Bondi Junction after the trams arrived in 1881. In 1858, the first official post office was opened, and the first school in 1879. By 1878 steam had supplanted wind in milling and the estate was closed. In May 1881, it was subdivided. Streets in this subdivision that exist today are Mill Hill Road and Hough Street. The subdivision of the estate coincided with the opening of the first tramway to the area – steam trams began operation from Taylor Square in Darlinghurst on 12 March 1881. A tramline was built to the
Bondi Beach Bondi Beach () is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Bondi Beach is located east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, local government area of ...
area in 1881, with a crossing loop line following in 1882 and the tramway junction off the Waverley line opened on 24 May 1884. The suburb acquired its name at this time.


20th century

With the subdivision of surrounding suburbs complete by 1930, Bondi Junction quickly grew into a major entertainment and commercial centre. Tram lines ran to Bondi Beach via Birriga Road, Bondi Beach via
Bondi Road Bondi Road is a major road through the Sydney suburb of Bondi, Australia. Route Bondi Road commences at the intersection of Syd Einfeld Drive, Oxford Street and Old South Head Road in Bondi Junction and heads in an easterly direction as a ...
, Bronte Beach and
The Spot The Spot, or thespot.com, was the first episodic online story (1995–1997), and covered Bandwidth (computing), bandwidth and production costs by offering paid advertising banners on the web pages and product placement within the journal entries ...
,
Randwick Randwick is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Randwick is located 6 kilometres south-east of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government ar ...
and the City at
Circular Quay Circular Quay is a harbour, former working port and now international passenger shipping terminal, public piazza and tourism precinct, heritage area, and transport node located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on the northern edge of the ...
and Central railway station. A tram depot was established on the corner of South Head Road (renamed Oxford Street with the completion of widening works in Darlinghurst) and the present day York Road. Oxford Street quickly became crowded and congested. By the 1960s traffic was at the point that Bondi Junction was one of the worst bottlenecks in Sydney. The
Eastern Suburbs railway line The Eastern Suburbs Railway (ESR) is a commuter railway line in Sydney constructed in the 1970s. It is operated by Sydney Trains and has stations at Martin Place, Kings Cross, Edgecliff and Bondi Junction. In addition, it has dedicated platf ...
, terminating at Bondi Junction, was opened in 1979.


21st century

The suburb was historically divided by the border of Waverley and
Woollahra Woollahra ( ) is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, local go ...
councils. In 2002, the boundary was realigned from Oxford Street to the bypass road (see below), giving Waverley Council full control of the commercial areas of the suburb. In April 2024, Joel Cauchi perpetrated a mass stabbing at Westfield Bondi Junction before being shot dead by police.


Star Theatre

In 1917 the first theatre in the area, named Star Theatre, was opened, situated on a triangular plot bounded by Bronte Road, Brisbane Street, and Ebley Street. This was demolished 10 years later, and a second Star Theatre opened in 1928. The 2,400-seat theatre was operated by Olympic Theatres until
Hoyts The HOYTS Group of companies in Australia and New Zealand includes HOYTS Cinemas, a cinema chain, and Val Morgan, which sells advertising on cinema screens and digital billboards. The company was established by dentist Arthur Russell in Melbo ...
purchased it in 1935. Architects Charles Bohringer & Associates (who also remodelled the Enmore Theatre in 1937) redesigned the cinema in an
Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
style before it was reopened in 1938. It became the largest and most popular cinema in the area, and was at one time one of the biggest suburban cinemas in New South Wales. In 1954 the Star was equipped with a new
CinemaScope CinemaScope is an anamorphic format, anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter. Its cr ...
screen. It was renamed the Hoyts Horror House for a short period in 1973. Hoyts sold the theatre in 1977, and it closed after ''
Salon Kitty Salon Kitty was a high-class Berlin brothel used by the Nazi intelligence service, the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD), for espionage purposes during . Created in the early 1930s by Katharina "Kitty" Schmidt, the salon was taken over by Nazi secre ...
'' was screened on 8 February 1977. The building reopened the in 1978 as the Star Rock Concert, and started showing films, but it closed permanently later in the year and was demolished in 1981.


Transport

Bondi Junction railway station is an underground station that is also the eastern terminus of the
Eastern Suburbs railway line The Eastern Suburbs Railway (ESR) is a commuter railway line in Sydney constructed in the 1970s. It is operated by Sydney Trains and has stations at Martin Place, Kings Cross, Edgecliff and Bondi Junction. In addition, it has dedicated platf ...
on the
Sydney Trains Sydney Trains is the brand name and operator of Railways in Sydney, suburban and intercity train services in and around Greater Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. The metropolitan part of the network is a hybrid urban rail, urban-suburban r ...
network. The station is also the terminus of limited South Coast Line services. A bus interchange is located at ground level, above the railway station and below residential towers. The Sydney tram network was closed in 1961 and the Waverley Tram Depot converted to a bus depot. This temporarily reduced the traffic problem in the area ; but, the rise of the private motor vehicle soon made the problem acute. A railway to Sydney's eastern suburbs was first proposed by John Young, Mayor of Sydney in the 1870s. This was subsequently incorporated into the Bradfield Scheme for improving Sydney's railways. The line was never built as Bradfield envisaged, however. In 1976, with construction of the railway underway and the NSW Government resolving to actually complete the project as far as Bondi Junction, construction was also begun on an elevated freeway-standard bypass of Bondi Junction. The Bondi Junction Bypass (later renamed Syd Einfeld Drive after the notable local man and one-time Member for Phillip), unlike the railway, was constructed quickly, opening on 6 January 1979. The road runs around the northern side of the business district from Oxford Street at Ocean Street to Oxford Street at Bondi Road and is elevated at about five metres above the ground. It is constructed as a continuous concrete plank bridge. The freeway is, in fact, the only section ever built of a much longer planned road known as the Eastern Freeway, a proposed freeway abandoned in the 1960s, which would have travelled between the Sydney CBD and Bondi. With the railway opening in June 1979, major changes to traffic flow were made in Bondi Junction. The main thoroughfare, Oxford Street, became devoted to buses only between Adelaide Street and Bronte Road and a pedestrian mall was created between Bronte Road and Newland Street, known as Bondi Junction Mall. The opening of the railway provided the opportunity to rationalise bus services in the Eastern Suburbs, with most city services eliminated or terminated at the new Bondi Junction Bus–Rail Interchange. In 1998, Woollahra Council, which controlled the site of the bus interchange, finalised an agreement to sell the airspace above the site to Meriton Apartments. Construction began in April 1999 for a new bus interchange and two residential apartment towers of over 70 m high. While this took place, upgrade works were also performed on Bondi Junction railway station. The new interchange was tentatively opened in September 2000 for the Sydney Olympics but subsequently closed for further work. The new bus interchange opened in July 2001.


Economy


Retail and shopping

Westfield Bondi Junction is a major mid to upmarket shopping centre opposite Bondi Junction railway station on the corner of Grosvenor and Oxford Street. There are also two smaller shopping centre nearby, Eastgate Bondi Junction located below the ''Eastgate'' residential apartment development and a shopping centre above the station and bus interchange known as Meriton Retail Precinct Bondi Junction.
Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road via Oxford Circus. It marks the notional boundary between the areas of Fitzrovia and Marylebone to t ...
is a major commercial centre in Bondi Junction as it contains numerous businesses including hotels and shops from the York Street end to Old South Head Road. Oxford Street Mall is a
pedestrian zone Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, as pedestrian precincts in British English, and as pedestrian malls in the United States and Australia) are areas of a city or town restricted to use by people on foot or ...
between Bronte Road and Newland Street and contains numerous shops and cafes. There are also shops along Spring Street, Ebley Street and Bronte Road.


High-density developments and housing

Bondi Junction is Sydney's fifth largest business district behind the CBD itself,
North Sydney North Sydney is a suburb and commercial district on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. And is the administrative centre for the local government area of North Sydney Council. History The Indigenous people on the s ...
,
Parramatta Parramatta (; ) is a suburb (Australia), suburb and major commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney. Parramatta is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district, Sydney CBD, on the banks of the Parramatta River. It is co ...
and Chatswood. Typical development in the commercial area consists of strip-mall type development two or three levels high. However, over the last 35 years, at least twenty buildings of 12 levels or higher have been constructed including Bondi Junction Private Hospital The first large development was the Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club (''Easts''), the local
rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
club for the
Eastern Suburbs Roosters Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club, known as the Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs. The club competes in the National Rugby Lea ...
. In the 1980s, following the completion of the Eastern Suburbs Railway, commercial development reached a peak with several office buildings built in the centre of Bondi Junction. By the 1990s, these were mostly displaced by residential developments. Bondi Junction features high density residential developments close to the commercial centre and low density housing further away. Domestic architecture includes Victorian and
Federation A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...
designs.


Demographics

According to the 2021 Census, there were 10,361 residents in Bondi Junction. In Bondi Junction, 42.0% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth were
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
9.0%,
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
3.8%,
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
3.2%,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
(excluding SARs and Taiwan) 3.0% and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
2.6%. 64.2% of people only spoke English at home. Other languages spoken at home included
Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
3.7%, Portuguese 3.6%,
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
3.1%,
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
2.5% and Italian 1.7%. The most common responses for religion in Bondi Junction were No Religion 41.1%,
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
(20.6%),
Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...
(11.2%) and
Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
6.4%.


Sport and recreation

Bondi Junction is represented in the
National Rugby League The National Rugby League (also known as the NRL Telstra Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is a professional rugby league competition in Oceania which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria (state), Victoria, the Austral ...
by the
Sydney Roosters Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club, known as the Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs. The club competes in the National Rugby Lea ...
, officially the Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club (ESDRLFC). The clubhouse of the team is centrally located on Spring Street, Bondi Junction. The Junction is known colloquially to residents in the area as "the home of the Roosters".


Local landmarks and heritage listing

Bondi Junction has many heritage-listed buildings and other items. Waverley Reservoirs on Paul Street is heritage listed at the state level. The following are some of the locally heritage listed buildings: * Italianate home used as community health centre, 26 Llandaff Street * Ben Eden, Paul Street * Blair Athol, Woodstock Street * Euston, Woodstock Street * Charles Terrace, Denison Street * Glen Mervyn, Denison Street * Myall, Mill Hill Road * Cintra, Mill Hill Road * Congregationalist Church, Botany Street * Clementson Park, Ebley Street * Fingleton Reserve, Waverley Crescent * Hallena, Waverley Street * Cotswald Hall, Dalley Street * Waverley Library File:(1)former_Congregationalist_Church_Botany_Street-2.jpg, Congregationalist Church, Botany Street File:(1)Italianate house Llandaff Street.jpg, Bondi Junction Community Health Centre, Llandalff Street


References


External links

* {{Sydney Waverley suburbs Suburbs of Sydney Waverley Council