A train station comes to Woollahra NSW: there goes the neighbourhood

3 September 2025

Woollahra, a suburb in Sydney’s east, is soon to have a train station. At first pass that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But the story is as long as the rail line is winding. Proposals to build a station in the affluent suburb are over a century old.

Then, in the 1970’s, as the Eastern Suburbs train line, AKA the T4, was being constructed, foundations for a station were laid. But work came to an abrupt halt when residents, unhappy at the prospect of a train station in their backyard, succeeded in stopping construction.

The partly built station sits between the stations at Edgecliff, and Bondi Junction, where the T4 line presently* terminates, a kilometre or two from the beach at Bondi. But with the housing situation in Sydney reaching dire proportions, the NSW State Government has revived plans to build the station, and then construct much needed high-density residences in the vicinity.

News of the station, and apartment blocks, has no doubt come as a double blow to locals.

Woollahra is far from apartment building free — an array of beautiful art deco style medium-density residences span Edgecliff Road — and the prospect of high density blocks will be causing alarm to some. But the reality is Sydney needs more residences, and it is unreasonable to expect all of these be built “somewhere” in the west of the city.

Or “the western side of ANZAC Parade”, a quip sometimes uttered by those residing on the eastern side of ANZAC Parade. ANZAC Parade being a major roadway running from inner Sydney through to La Perouse, at the southern end of the eastern suburbs.

Some Woollahra residents will argue the presence of high-rise dwellings will be at odds with the “character” of the suburb. Woollahra is possessed of houses built in the nineteenth century, quiet tree-lined streets (one or two rather steep), boutique shops, and a village-like ambience. It is a place many people would like to call home. The building proposals will bring significant changes.

Spring Street, Bondi Junction, NSW, at dusk. Photo taken June 2021. Note the construction crane in the top right hand corner.

But such is life in the big city. Change is constant. Bondi Junction — where we stay when not on the NSW Central Coast — situated right next to Woollahra, has undergone a tremendous transformation in the last decade, particularly along parts of Oxford Street. While always a mixed commercial/retail and residential precinct, numerous high-density apartment blocks now line Oxford street.

Of course Bondi Junction, being a retail centre, and public transport hub, with the aforementioned T4 train line, and numerous bus services, seems an ideal place to build residences. That’s not to say everyone in Bondi Junction is happy with the prospect. Many feel the suburb has been over-developed. But again, housing shortages in the region have compelled governments to act.

Yet the “residential-isation” of Oxford Street, and surrounds, has not always been a bad thing. Bondi Junction is at once a quiet residential suburb, after the shops close, in the midst of a bustling commercial centre. People walk their dogs along Oxford Street in the evenings, a sight that would not have been seen ten years ago.

Despite this metamorphosis, perceptions of Bondi Junction have not changed.

Either within the eastern suburbs, or elsewhere in Sydney. As far as other residents of the eastern suburbs are concerned, the junction is “ugly”. Meanwhile people outside the eastern suburbs think Bondi Junction is full of rich snobs. But nahsayers of the junction are looking at the wrong suburb when identifying ugly, or seeking to point out “rich snobs”.

But I digress. I’m not saying high-density residential blocks in Woollahra, full of dog owners, will bring about any sort of catharsis to existing residents who are going to be subject to possibly decades of disruptive construction work. They had all of that in Bondi Junction, and will probably continue to, but the world did not end.

Whether we like it or not, high-density accommodation is one of the solutions to the shortage of housing, and is something everyone in Sydney needs to get used to.

* there were proposals to extend the train line to Bondi Beach, but residents rallied to oppose the idea.

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