Talk:Ashfield, New South Wales

Untitled
Missing sections:
 * Aboriginal culture
 * Population statistics
 * Local events

Other things needed:
 * A lot of polishing.

Wanted photos

 * Clock tower on the Peak Freen biscuit factory (now Bunnings Warehouse).✅
 * Tower on Norman Self's Amesbury in Alt Street.✅
 * St Vincent's Catholic Church. ✅

Sometime or other I intend to get a photo of Ashfield Park from Parramatta Rd but realistically we have more than enough photos now :) Crico 06:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Separate page for the Local Government Area
As per discussion at Talk:List of Sydney suburbs, I have created a separate page for the Municipality of Ashfield, the Local Government Area. -- Ianblair23 05:44, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Politics
Politically Ashfield has been a traditional stronghold of the Labor party. Since the late 1990s and especially after 2004 Local Government in Ashfield is experiencing a shift away from the Labor to smaller political entities such as the Greens and other miscellaneous Independents. Many residents argue that this derives from ratepayer dissatisfaction with unsympathetic highrise developments in the area, much of which has been done with the blessing of the Labor Party dominated Ashfield Council. The present political make up of the Ashfield Municipal Council is: Labor Party - 4 Greens - 3 Independents - 3 Liberal (conservative) Party - 1

First intentional use of a parachute in Australia
According to a plaque set in the ground, the park at the corner of Frederick and Church Streets (then known as the Ashfield Sports Ground or similar??) was the launching point of the first "deliberate", "intentional" use of a parachute in Australia. Presumably there had been unplanned or emergency use of parachutes prior to December 8, 1888, on which date J.T. Williams ascended 6000 feet in a balloon and jumped out on purpose. To celebrate the centenary of the achievement, an Australian parachuting champion repeated the jump, and the Ashfieldians put up the complicated plaque that can be seen today. - Juliannechat 5 April 2006

P. L. Travers
The author of five volumes of Mary Poppins stories lived in Ashfield while she was a schoolgirl, and her most famous character was briefly commemmorated there.

"In her long life, spent in London, the United States and Dublin, Travers kept her Australian origins hidden. But when she died in 1996, much of her Australian life was revealed."

-- Valerie Lawson, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2004

"On July 28 vandals attacked the Poppins statue in Ashfield Park, leaving only the feet. The rest of the body lay on the ground, with much damage to the legs and umbrella. The bits are now in the council depot and will be repaired by a local craftsman."

-- Valerie Lawson, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, August 9, 2005

The following information about "Travers" is from Valerie Lawson's Out Of The Sky She Came, Hodder 1999 (British title Mary Poppins She Wrote).

Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, QLD, on 9 August 1899, and spent her childhood there and in Bowral. In 1912 she became a boarder at Normanhurst Private Girls School in Ashfield. A few years later her mother rented a cottage at 17 Pembroke Street, Ashfield, so that she could once again live at home and her younger sisters could also attend Normanhurst. She chose her new name, Pamela Lyndon Travers, when she began work as a journeyman actress and journalist. After she left Australia in 1924 Travers divided her time between England, Ireland, and America and most of her readers did not know about her Australian past.

According to Lawson's research, "Lyndon was never, in her own mind, an Australian, always an Irish woman with a Scots mother." In addition to tracing the ways that the Mary Poppins stories used autobiographical material (e.g., Travers' father had presided over a bank failure!), Lawson thoroughly reviews all of Travers' writing, and her long involvement with Irish writers (AE, Yeats, etc.) and a succession of mystical teachers (Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti and others), and various intense friendships with both men and women. Lawson also analyses Travers' involvement with and complex reactions to the Disney treatment of Mary, which made her a wealthy woman. Travers protected her privacy in life but chose to sell moderately revealing letters and papers to Sydney's Mitchell Library.

During her lifetime Travers gave money for a statue of Mary Poppins to be erected in New York City's Central Park, but there were almost no other donations and the project had to be abandoned. (All of the preceding information is from Lawson. See the P. L. Travers topic for more Lawson links, including one about Lawson's dispute with New Yorker staff writer Caitlin Flanagan, whom Lawson alleges used Lawson's original Travers research without attribution, in a recent profile.) - Juliannechat 23 June 2006

Just drove past the Mary Poppins statue and it's back in place. - Juliannechat 30 September 2006

More on the Caitlin Flanagan issue: this link from Salon quotes Lawson (except not by name) and states that the Poppins article was Flanagan's last article for the New Yorker and that professionalism was likely an issue in the parting. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/11/22/flanagan/index.html - Juliannechat 23 April 2009

Mei Quong Tart
More on the pioneering Sydney businessman Mei Quong Tart. Per CHIA, "While seen by the non-Chinese community as a leader of the Chinese the Chinese community was divided in their views and support of him." ("http://www.chia.chinesemuseum.com.au/biogs/CH00021b.htm") His former mansion (on Arthur Street) was mostly pulled down this summer, but a tower segment is being kept, to be incorporated into a new aged care facility named for him. There's also a bust of him near the railway station. Tart died of pleurisy contracted while recovering from a beating that was almost certainly a hate crime. - Juliannechat 5 April 2006

Population
Does the population of 40,000 refer to the municipality, rather than the suburb? Is it an error? Even a very dense placce would be hard pressed to have so many.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 06:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed! I've removed this incorrect figure. Anyone know the population then? --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 12:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I just searched at the ABS and got 20681 from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@cpp.nsf/DetailsPage/SSC110762001?OpenDocument&tabname=Details&prodno=SSC11076&issue=2001&num=&view=&#Basic%20Community%20Profile 99of9 04:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Re-assessed to B - GA thoughts?
This article is a good level B now. I would be happy to take on the task of providing a full assessment and suggestions to reach GA if an editor/s wants to (a) read the document thoroughly looking particularly for choppy unencyclopaedic language, (b) check all references and make sure they follow this format:  , (c) adjust fixed images so that they don't overlap the gallery, and (d) post a request for that assessment directly to my talk page. Your call if you are interested.-- VS talk 14:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

My assessment following Crico's request
I have been asked to provide an assessment of the article as of today’s date.

Firstly I note that the main editor for some weeks has been Crico and he should be commended for his determination.

I do not mean to be harsh or discourteous in any way, thus from my perspective (I do tend to be a fairly hard marker) I note that the article has adjusted substantially and positively over the past few weeks. It is much closer to being assessable as a GA article but rather than do that at this stage I would rather make the following suggestions for improvement and then invite editors to re-submit when the article is a good deal closer.

Hopefully without appearing rude (and I make this point only because one of the editors mentioned that s/he was trying to gain the same status as Summer Hill) I suggest that you not use the Summer Hill article which IMHO is reaching the stage where a reassessment as to whether it is still GA, may be required.

In terms of this article - there is no reason why it could not make FA status. Towards that end editors should use as a benchmark Canberra which is FA but hope to get it up to at least Riverina which is a GA. I would be more than happy to follow this process through to that stage if you are of a mind to continue to seek my input.

Towards that end my suggestions are:
 * 1) As a general comment we must remember that the article is available to be read across the whole of the Wiki world. From this perspective words and abbreviations that provide reference should be both expanded and wiki-linked.  For example in the second sentence the word kms should be kilometres✅.
 * 2) Also wiki-link words such as Federation✅, Victorian✅, supermarket✅, light industry✅, Greens✅, Liberal✅, etc etc as this will help the reader to understand about this material if they need to.
 * 3) Also in the lead the sentence that reads These days, the suburb is known for being highly multicultural with a particularly strong Chinese community  needs rewriting with removal of the word known✅. Ashfield may be multicultural etc but it is not known for that fact – perhaps just writing ''The suburb is highly multicultural with a particularly strong Chinese community (also is this fact referenced – perhaps elsewhere in the document?) – this fact should also receive an inline citation.
 * 4) Again in the lead the sentence remove the bracketed un-encyclopaedic comment about Australian parlance and simply wiki-link apartment – which does explain that apartment means flat in the commonwealth countries.✅
 * 5) Car yards are what – are they car parks, or car dealerships, or wrecking yards (yes of course I know but for the rest of the wiki community?)✅
 * 6) The history section within 6 short paragraphs moves from 1788 to 2005. The whole section needs to be split into 3 or 4 subsections so the readers (and future editors) are drawn to the correct place for their consideration.✅
 * 7) Para’s 2, 3, 4, & 6 of that section make various strong Point of View assertions, but none of them are given inline citations.✅
 * 8) "By 1790, a road had been built etc – a few words later becomes a rough track. Please write this up as one fact or the other.✅
 * 9) Have a look at the sub-headings being used. For example the heading "Residents" probably should be Demographics and "Schools" will probably be better as Education.✅
 * 10) The page has so many notable residents I suggest that you open up a new article titled Notable Residents of Ashfield, New South Wales and then refer back to that one (if you are interested in how this is done have a look at either Canberra or Riverina).✅
 * 11) Even if you do not do set up a new page, all notable residents (by definition) deserve their own wiki-link (even if that means they are red-linked). For example Augustus Alt, Frederick Clissold etc.✅
 * 12) Also this section needs to be given some symmetry – that is each person should be set up in the same way, something like, bullet point, name, birth./death, why they were famous – at the moment the names and details are choppy and untidy.✅
 * 13) The first 2 or 3 paragraphs under Transport provide several Point of View statements and statements of fact which all need an inline citation.✅
 * 14) The article states, "In 1842, rival landowner Robert Campbell …" why is he a rival landowner?✅ He was a rival in the sense that he was the other major landowner in the area at the time and his building of the Methodist Church was a direct response to Underwood's building of the Anglican church. However, since I don't really want go into that in the article, I've changed it to neighbouring landowner.Crico 23:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Remove the bolding in the prose under Landmarks.
 * 16) The content under Churches is desperately in need of some inline citation.✅
 * 17) The sub-heading Schools (particularly the first paragraph) needs to be rewritten to remove most of the bracketing – which should be turned into part of the prose.
 * 18) Pamela Travers is mention again in this section and she is also in the notable residents section (which is fine) but the name changes between the sections.
 * 19) Rose Payton sounds important and should be wiki-linked (even if that turns her into a redlink)✅removed
 * 20) Remove the words, "For federal elections, " that starts the paragraph under Politics as it is a tautology in relation to the next part of the sentence.✅
 * 21) Bolding within the sub-section of Sport and Recreation needs to be removed.
 * 22) That sub-heading is in itself incorrect and should be adjusted to follow the headings guidelines for wiki.✅
 * 23) The final paragraph needs to gain inline citations in various places.
 * 24) There are quite a few areas of un-encyclopaedic language, two examples are:
 * The attached table shows that when you just look at the polling booths in the suburb of Ashfield, Labor has consistently returned over 65% of the two-party preferred vote in recent years.
 * The Presbyterians were the next cab off the rank ✅

I will be happy to reassess directly against the GA criteria - however you should look carefully at the two examples I gave at the top of this critique to see what else could be expanded and fixed. I understand this is a lot of work – but a GA article is a feather in your cap so keep going. Please let me know on my talk page when you finish or if you have any questions. -- VS talk 11:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Further to the above
I note overnight that eyedubya is assisting - thank you. Can I suggest that a good way to inform other editors that areas in the list above have been adjusted is to use the template  ✅  which provides an image like this ✅. You can add these throughout the list as often as you like. I have added the first one on behalf of one of eyedubya's changes. Cheers!-- VS talk 21:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Recent events
I've started to edit this section for NPOV, and V reasons. I'm not sure why the Brescia fire is in there - is it related to the inter-ethnic violence in Sydney? If so, then more references are needed than the one cited. If it isn't related, then it should be in a separate paragraph. While I've tried to sort out opinion from fact wrt the gang rapes section (i.e. matters of causality wrt Cronulla riots were the opinion of Baird, who is a member of the right-wing Liberal party, and is not scientific fact), I'm sure there is more that could be done.Eyedubya 23:01, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Firstly, the fire has no connection to the other events. Secondly, I don't really see the need for either the gang rapes or the fire to be in the article but someone else did so I've left it. If someone else deletes the whole section, I won't be upset. Because VS suggested putting subheads in the history section, I thought I'd better expand it slightly so it wasn't just one sentence but I did it in a clumsy way and your edit is better. As a resident of Ashfield, I saw no evidence of rioting at the time. The wiki article on the Cronulla riots claims it spilled over into Ashfield. I confess I hadn't checked the sources in that article. Finally, re: the politics, rightly or wrongly people who are anti-immigrant do use the rapes as justification for their views. It isn't a valid justification but when people like Alan Jones push the connection, it sticks in people's minds and it was a contributing factor to the Cronulla riots. The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to delete the whole section. Crico 01:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Presumably this is an issue of notability? If the post-Cronulla rioting in Ashfield is documented in reliable sources, then maybe it qualifies for inclusion somewhere in WP, along with any notable resistance or other kinds of community/political activity associated with it. However, whether or not the gang rapes qualify for a mention in this particular article is another matter - rapes occur everywhere, though most of the time they wouldn't qualify for a mention in an article about a suburb. Perhaps they should be moved to an article on gang rapes in Australia, which could then incorporate the stuff on the 'Sydney gang rapes'. Its like the Cronulla riots - that piece could be a section in an article on 'beachside conflict in Australia', b/c its a phenomenon with a long history.Eyedubya 03:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I should have checked the state of the article first! No worries.Eyedubya 03:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Amesbury or Anesbury?
I have reverted the spelling of this building to Amesbury. There does seem to be some confusion over the spelling but the more reliable sources (in my view) use Amesbury:
 * Three documents from Ashfield Council
 * The NSW Heritage OFfice Register
 * The Royal Australian Historical Society's profile of Norman Selfe (builder of Amesbury)

References to Anesbury include:
 * Aussie Heritage
 * Picture Australia

Major redesign
I gave this article a big makeover today. It seemed way too image-heavy, with lots of problems like bunched-up edit links, overlapping floats, and far too much on the right-hand-side. I've tried to stagger images, replace galleries with single images, fix up the edit links, kill some unencyclopedic language, and some other related and unrelated stuff. Do tell me what you think! &mdash; Werdna  •  talk  03:26, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Ashfield, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070917080354/http://www.sydneywater.com.au/WhoWeAre/OurHeritageAssets/pdf/public4575750.pdf to http://www.sydneywater.com.au/WhoWeAre/OurHeritageAssets/pdf/public4575750.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070205210528/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au:80/carnival/carnival_the_carnival.htm to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/carnival/carnival_the_carnival.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 20:57, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Ashfield, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060820051931/http://www.smbc.com.au/about_campuses_ashfield.htm to http://www.smbc.com.au/about_campuses_ashfield.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 02:09, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Ashfield, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110706113301/http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20061116/NWS09/611165615/Mall+plans+for+approval to http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20061116/NWS09/611165615/Mall+plans+for+approval
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110706113311/http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20061116/NWS09/611163263/Ashfield+goes+slow to http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20061116/NWS09/611163263/Ashfield+goes+slow

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 15:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 16 one external links on Ashfield, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121226084727/http://www.suburbguide.com.au/category/home/location/sydney-inner-west to http://www.suburbguide.com.au/category/home/location/sydney-inner-west
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.sydneybuses.info/commonpdfs/sydneybuses/map/regionmaps/southern_region_map.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.sydneyprivate.com.au/home/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=18
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/walks.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/ashfield_park.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/facilities.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/A
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/whats_on/m4east.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/library_authatashfield_Coming.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.westsmagpies.net/archives/2007/php/history.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041013000434/http://members.optusnet.com.au:80/ashfield_dhs/index.htm to http://members.optusnet.com.au/ashfield_dhs/index.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 14:05, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 9 external links on Ashfield, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070909082057/http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/trafficinformation/downloads/aadt_data_files/aadtsydney2002_i.pdf to http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/trafficinformation/downloads/aadt_data_files/aadtsydney2002_i.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070123015806/http://www.sydneyprivate.com.au/home/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=18 to http://www.sydneyprivate.com.au/home/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=18
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070205185612/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/walks.htm to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/walks.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070829213401/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/ashfield_park.pdf to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/pdf_files/ashfield_park.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070205205236/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/facilities.htm to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/parks/facilities.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070312215639/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/whats_on/m4east.htm to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/whats_on/m4east.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070829121122/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/library_authatashfield_Coming.htm to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/library_authatashfield_Coming.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120205092717/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/page/current_artist_in_residence.html to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/page/current_artist_in_residence.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120321150541/http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/page/past_artists_in_residence.html to http://www.ashfield.nsw.gov.au/page/past_artists_in_residence.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 10:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)