Villawood

Villawood, a suburb of local government areas City of Canterbury-Bankstown and City of Fairfield, is 22 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and is a part of the Greater Western Sydney region.

Villawood, a suburb of local government areas City of Canterbury-Bankstown and City of Fairfield, is 22 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and is a part of the Greater Western Sydney region.

The Aboriginal tribe of Gandangara once lived in the area. European settlement began in the early 1840s. During the 1860s, Villawood was used as pastoral land, but it was overrun with wild dogs. Woodville Road, which runs through Villawood, was once named Dog Trap Road because many farmers set dog traps for these wild dogs. A train station opened in 1922 to service the area was originally known as Woodville Road. Unfortunately, there was confusion with another place called Woodville in the Hunter Valley and thus the name was transposed into 'Villawood'.The Villawood area is home to a large public housing estate constructed around the 1950s-1970s consisting of detached cottages, semi-detached townhouses, walk up apartments on Urana street, and formerly a Radburn design housing complex on the site of Thurina park, which became infamous for serious social issues, such as drugs and anti-social youth crime, even eventually breeding a gang called “the Bronx boys”, dabbling in the drug trade and car-rebirthing before the eventual demolition of the complex in 1998.