April 11, 2014

Horse 1651 - Ten Suburbs. No.20 Clyde 2142

Oops... I think I may have goofed here... I think that everyone may have goofed here.

In this run of Ten Suburbs, I've touched on the idea of what actually constitutes a suburb. The problem with Clyde is that even after looking at several maps, I can't honestly tell if it is one or not.


According to The Geographical Names Board of NSW a "suburb" is a bounded area within the landscape that has an "Urban" Character. This is as opposed to a "township" or "localities" in rural areas.
On the Geographical Names Board of NSW's website, you can do a search to see where a suburb/locality is. The problem is that on one section of the website, it provides a map of an appropriate area and yet on another, it thinks that the entire of Clyde (if it exists) is part of Granville.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that Clyde doesn't appear as a suburb in the Gregory's, UBD or even Google Maps which presumably get there information from... The Geographical Names Board of NSW.

Part of the reason for this whole problem, lies in the fact that The Commissioner of Railways of NSW, Edward Miller Grant Eddy (for whom Eddy Avenue near Sydney Terminal is named), changed the name of Rosehill Junction station to Clyde Junction in 1901 and then the name reverted to Clyde in 1904.
It also doesn't help that Clyde Engineering which is next door built railway locomotives there until 1973. Nor does it help that Clyde railway station itself doesn't lie within the boundaries of the suburb of Clyde, if in fact the suburb even exists in the first place.

One of the odd things about Sydney and its suburban railway network is that a railway station usually accompanies a particular suburb. The suburb of "Sydney" which lies in the postcode of 2000, for instance, has five stations within its boundaries: Wynyard, Town Hall, Circular Quay, St James and Musuem and Sydney Terminal/Central lies in the suburb of Haymarket.
Clyde was even sort of legitimised (if it isn't a suburb) by the existence of the former railway station of Clyburn which was between Clyde and Auburn. Jokingly, it is often said that trains frequently stop at the imaginary stations of Strathbush, Camperbury and Kogadale.
Clyde Junction serves a useful purpose, being the junction between the Carlingford Line and the Western Line but I don't know if even that necessarily makes it a suburb.

Clyde either is a suburb or it isn't. I don't know if it is or not; mapmakers prefer to rule it out rather than in and not even The Geographical Names Board of NSW has a definative answer.
Asking the question of whether Clyde is, is like asking "What Are Birds?"... we just don't know.

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