Seizing the opportunity, in 1924 Ku-ring-gai Shire Deputy President Christopher Thistlethwayte proposed that his fellow councillors allow the Moore Estate, of which his family owned a share, to be subdivided for residential development.
[2] To ensure that prospective buyers did not miss the link between the bridge's completion and the future value of the land, he proposed that it be named after the project's high-profile chief engineer, John Bradfield.
The Council agreed to Thistlethwayte's plan: shire president John Lockley considered the engineer, who lived in nearby Gordon, to be "Ku-ring-gai’s greatest citizen".
One of the attendees, local MP and future premier Tom Bavin, predicted that "Dr Bradfield's name would be closely connected with the bridge itself and North Shore generally for all time.
[1][2] The following year, the Sunday Times real estate section enthused: Because of its mountain air, and its lovely forest areas, this region is becoming more and more popular with people who wish to make their homes handy to the city, and yet be able to get into a quiet and restful atmosphere once they late left shop, office, or factory.
It is about 300 feet [91 metres] above sea level, is situated in undulating country, possesses charming scenic surroundings, and most attractive sites for homes.
Moore Avenue, which led south through the estate to Fullers Bridge, was planned to form part of a secondary route north parallel to what later became the Pacific Highway.
Not only did it add to homelessness by undertaking slum clearance before replacement homes had been built; it crippled the private rental market by enforcing rent controls.
The Commonwealth agreed to lease only part of the Bradfield Park site to the Commission: its own Assisted Passage Migration Scheme meant that it was now responsible for housing thousands of immigrants from Europe.
[5][8] Though they both faced a similar need to urgently provide temporary accommodation for thousands of people, and both operated from the Bradfield Park site, the Housing Commission and the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service had radically different approaches.
The Housing Commission wanted to provide each family with its own bathroom and kitchen, even in temporary accommodation, and so only used the "P1" huts – timber framed, rectangular buildings measuring 5.4 by 18.2 metres.
Visiting the facility, MP Roger de Bryon-Faes described "breeding grounds for disease, unhappiness, social misfits and communism, in which human beings degenerate and become frustrated and bereft of all hope, initiative and ambition ...
By contrast, actor Bryan Brown, whose family lived at Bradfield Park for 12 months after moving from Britain, recalled the time fondly.
[8] Hogan observes that Sydney was also home to shanty towns during this period, in which conditions were far dirtier and more dangerous – to have closed the Community Housing Centres would have been to force more people into makeshift dwellings.
In 1951, the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service announced that the Eastern Europeans would be moved to hostels elsewhere in Sydney, to make way for 'Ten Pound Poms', participants in the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme.
CSIRO had determined that the site, relatively distant from major roads, enjoyed sufficiently low levels of vibration to house a new National Measurement Laboratory.
[5] The presence of migrant and low-income families had, in the eyes of residents, affected perceptions of the area; despite Dr Bradfield's considerable achievements, his surname now carried a certain stigma.