About Newtown
Newtown is an Inner West suburb of Sydney, NSW, Australia. It is located approximately 4 kilometres from the Sydney Central Business District. See a map of newtown below.
Newtown’s main road, King Street, was one of the first suburban shopping destinations outside Sydney City. The suburb is renowned today for its diverse and unique community. The major shopping strips along King Street and Enmore Road contain a unique variety of shops, restaurants and pubs which showcase this vibrant and diverse culture.
10 Things to know about Newtown
1. The name, Newtown, originated from John Webster’s New Town store which existed in the early 1800s. This store stood on the site of what is now the Zanzibar Hotel, 323 King Street Newtown.
2. Newtown does not have a McDonalds Family Restaurant. A McDonalds Restaurant opened in Newtown at 285 King Street Newtown in April 1989. It was closed in 1998 due to the changing demographics of the Newtown area, particularly in King Street (Cummins, C & Geesche, J. 'Fat-free Newtown gives McDonald's the gherkin' SMH, Sydney, NSW: 25 July 1998 p.1). The site at 285 King Street Newtown is now the Irish pub Kelly's on King.
3. The Martin Luther King Mural on King Street Newtown was designed and spray painted by Andrew Aitken, Juilee Pryor and other members of Unmitigated Audacity Productions in 1991. Andrew Aitken, the chief artist of the mural, is now serving a life sentence for murder in England. His crime was committed before the mural was painted in 1991 (Nicholls, S., 'Wall of Silence: street art hid a tale of murder and repentance' SMH, 24 April 2003). For more information regarding the meaning of the mural see our Essays and Histories section
4. Alderman Lilian Fowler (formerly known as Elizabeth Lilian Maud Fowler) was the first woman Mayor in Australia. She was elected as an Alderman for Newtown Council in 1928 becoming the first female alderman in NSW and in 1938 was elected Mayor of Newtown.
5. The band AC/DC met, formed and rehearsed in Newtown in the early 1970s. At this time the band members were Malcolm Young, Angus Young, Colin Burgess, Larry Van Kriedt and Dave Evans. The building was on the corner of Wilson & Erskineville Road Newtown (Information supplied to CoSA care of Dave Evans).
6. Eliza Donnithorne, one of the more celebrated people in Newtown's history, may have been the inspriration for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (See "The truth about the truth about Eliza Donnithone" in our Essays and Histories section)
7. Henry Lawson lived in Newtown in the 1890s after marrying his Newtown fiancé Bertha Bredt. Whilst Bertha was courting Henry, she lived at 152 Probert Street Newtown (Gebick, Johnston & Wood, Go Explore Sydney: themed walks and adventures, Explore Australia Publishing, 2009).
8. Australia's first commercial car share scheme was founded as Newtown Car Share. It grew to become GoGet, now operating in most Australian capital cities (see: GoGet's story)
9. Victims of NSW's most notorious early shipwreck, the Dunbar, are buried at St Stephens Church Newtown. (More information about The Dunbar)
10. Newtown Jets is Australia's oldest Rugby League club. It was formed on 8 January 1908 (Newtown Jets Website, 2009, http://www.newtownjets.com.au/).
If you have any interesting facts about Newtown, we would love to hear them!
Where is Newtown?
See also our Maps section for historical maps and local government boundaries information.