BANKSMEADOW, NEW SOUTH WALES

'Banksmeadow' is a suburb in south-eastern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Banksmeadow is located 11 kilometres south-east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local Government Area of the City of Botany Bay. Banksmeadow sits on the northern shore of Botany Bay.

Contents

History

Schools

References

External links

History

Botany Bay is where Captain James Cook first landed ashore on 29th April 1770, when navigating his way around Australia on his ship, the Endeavour. Banksmeadow is named after the ship's botanist Joseph Banks.
Banksmeadow also is home to Port Botany of which the NSW Iemma Government has decided to expand by creating a 60 ha third terminal by dredging 7.5 million cubic metres of Botany Bay seabed that will have a major impact on the Bay's ecology and surrounding environment. The Iemma Government approved the expansion and has decided to make it twice the size of that recommended by the Independent Commission of Enquiry (COI) which recommended a maximum 30-35 ha expansion.
The Iemma Government's decision to concentrate the bulk of NSW's container trade at Port Botany will see a tripling of containers being processed, and although there are plans to double the current percentage of containers being transported by freight rail from 20% to 40%, there will still be a 200% increase in container trucks on Sydney's roads.
Due to the lack of appropriate road and rail infrastructure to support the current levels of containers being transported, the decision to expand Port Botany and concentrate all the container processing through Sydney is going to have a long-term detrimental impact on traffic congestion. These extra 3000 container trucks per day will be spewing out carcinogenic fine diesel particles across Sydney.
Port Botany is a sleeping giant that will eventually strangle Sydney's already choking roads and the Iemma Government's decision to expand Port Botany follows on the back of the controversial infrastructure developments including the Cross City Tunnel, the Sydney Airport to Central rail link, the totally inadequate M5 to name a few.
Banksmeadow lies on the northern side of Botany Bay and is home to Botany Beach (aka Foreshore Beach) which is one of the very few Sydney beaches where dogs are allowed. Unfortunately, although Botany Beach was to remain a sandy public beach as part of the port expansion, The Sydney Ports Corporation has changed the plan after the approval and now plans to build a rock seawall along 80% of the beach making it unusable. Taking a beach away is considered totally un-Australian!
Botany Bay is seen as the birthplace of European Australia where Captain Cook and the first Fleet arrived. Unfortunately, after 200 years, competing interests by government and industry has seen the Bay treated as a toilet. Now the Iemma Government is planning to develop a desalination plant where the salt from the desalination will be discharged into the Bay and the water pipes will be running across the bay and through a number of Sydney suburbs.

Schools

Banksmeadow Public School is a primary school. J. J. Cahill Memorial High School [1] is the nearest high school in Mascot.

References

★ ''The Book of Sydney Suburbs'', Compiled by Frances Pollen, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, Published in Australia ISBN 0-207-14495-8

External links

★ Banksmeadow

★ City Of Botany Bay