The Sydney Morning Herald
· collected 2026-09-18 · by Eryk Bagshaw, Patrick Hatch, Ellie Busby
Ted Brill stands outside the Ebenezer Church and surveys the paddocks before him.
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Brill → stand → him
It was here, two centuries ago, that Australia’s first migrant town was established.
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town → establish → ?
On a ship built in Bangladesh, eight free families from different denominations arrived from Britain in 1802: Davison, Hall, Howe, Johnston, Johnstone, Mein, Stubbs and Turnbull.
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families → build → 1802
“They wanted more freedom in their worship,” says Brill.
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Brill → want → worship
They were merchants, teachers and religious ministers who survived floods and famine.
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who → survive → floods
Before they built Australia’s oldest standing church and school, the Ebenezer families prayed under a red gum tree.
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families → build → tree
Half of it still stands, a living monument to the generations of migrants who used the Hawkesbury River in NSW as their highway, transporting their food and their dead for burial, on land occupied for 50,000 years by the Indigenous Darug people.
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who → stand → people
Australia’s oldest migrant town is now almost 90 per cent Australian-born.
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town → bear → ?
“We bought the paddock across the road to keep the development away,” says Brill, former school principal-turned-local historian, and secretary of the church.
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Brill → buy → church
Ebenezer’s southern edge sits right on the development fringe reshaping Australia’s cities, from The Ponds in Sydney’s north-west to Tarneit in south-west Melbourne, driven partly by populations more likely to come from Kolkata or Manila than Edinburgh or London.
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edge → sit → Edinburgh
These outer suburban districts share three factors: high migration levels, strong house price growth, and infrastructure strain.
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districts → share → factors
They are also areas One Nation must challenge, if it is to be a credible opposition or government, as it tries to frame the next federal poll as an immigration election.
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it → challenge → election
“We are very much in the mind for the western suburbs of Sydney,” One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce declared after the party won the Farrer byelection in May.
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party → declare → May
One Nation has so far announced 36 candidates for the upcoming Victorian state election, including 31 running for the lower house, mostly in outer suburban and regional seats.
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Nation → announce → seats
In Tarneit, on Melbourne’s western fringe, the neatly planned streets hum with the sound of construction.
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streets → plan → construction
Builders hammer at the timber frame of a new detached house.
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Builders → hammer → house
A rumbling bobcat clears a dusty paddock, preparing for another subdivision.
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bobcat → rumble → subdivision
Today it has more than 60,000 residents.
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it → have → residents
Mandy Gupta moved to Australia from India nine years ago on a permanent skilled migration visa.
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Gupta → move → visa
The IT expert says his life in Tarneit is better than he ever expected.
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he → say → Tarneit
He is raising his three Australian-born children here.
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He → raise → children
“I would never even imagine going back,” he says.
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he → imagine → ?
But rapid population growth is putting immense pressure on Tarneit’s essential infrastructure.
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growth → put → infrastructure
Roads are increasingly congested, and country V/Line trains overflow as they pass through the suburb.
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they → congest → suburb
The local Wyndham Council says it is already woefully short of swimming pools and sports facilities.
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it → say → pools
It forecasts Tarneit and nearby Truganina will grow from 111,000 residents to 180,000 over the next 20 years.
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Tarneit → forecast → years
In Tarneit, average traffic speed has fallen by 9 per cent in the past five years, according to data obtained by HERE traffic analytics.
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speed → fall → analytics
Even after accounting for COVID-19 lockdowns, drivers are taking longer to go where they want to go.
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they → account → lockdowns
Nearby Point Cook has seen its population jump by 8 per cent since 2021, while its average speed has dropped by almost 18 per cent.
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speed → see → cent
The same phenomenon is playing out in Sydney.
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phenomenon → play → Sydney
Blacktown in Sydney’s west has had average speeds drop from 61km/h in 2024 to 55km/h this year.
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speeds → have → km/h
In Penrith, the average congestion has grown from 12.5 per cent in 2023 to 15.4 per cent this year.
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congestion → grow → cent
Gupta says the pressures are real.
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pressures → say → ?
“There’s no balance between the number of people who are migrating and the investment,” he says.
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he → ’ → people
“[But] you can’t put everything on immigration.”
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you → put → immigration
Instead of public debate being focused on solutions to infrastructure funding and housing supply, the Indian community is bearing the brunt of an anti-immigrant backlash.
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community → focus → backlash
Gupta says Indian friends are reluctant to go into the city because of far-right anti-migration rallies, and fear being abused or assaulted on public transport, or at pubs and nightclubs.
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friends → say → pubs
“Migrants are blamed for a whole lot of issues.
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Migrants → blame → issues
Why are they not focusing on the significant contribution that migrants make?
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migrants → focus → that
Migrants are starting new businesses and filling labour shortages in critical sectors.
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Migrants → start → sectors
…and 87 more, not listed.
The Aporia
