Cabramatta is located 30 kilometres (19 mi) south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Fairfield.

It evolved into a Sydney suburb in the mid 20th century, partly as the result of a major state housing project in the nearby Liverpool area in the 1960s that in turn swallowed Cabramatta.

The presence of a migrant hostel alongside Cabramatta High School was decisive in shaping the community in the post-war period.

They satisfied labour demand for surrounding manufacturing and construction activities, and eventually gave birth to a rapidly growing population in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[citation needed] In the 1980s, Cabramatta and the surrounding Fairfield area was characterised by a diversity of Australian-born children having migrant parents.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the migrant hostel – along with its peer in Villawood – hosted a second wave of migration: this time from south-east Asia as a result of the Vietnam War.

By the early 1980s migration to Cabramatta declined, and as a result the migrant hostel and its many hundreds of small empty apartments lay prey to vandalism.

A walk through the hostel before its demolition would have revealed closed and boarded-up corrugated iron buildings once home to kitchens, washing facilities, administration and so forth.

The Pai Lau or gateway forms the main ornamental feature of Freedom Plaza and symbolises harmony and multiculturalism.

A heritage-listed bandstand, built in 1922 to honour the soldiers who lost their lives fighting in the First World War, is located near the centre of the park.

[13] The Vietnam War Comradeship Memorial, a monument containing a fountain and pond centred upon a bronze statue of two soldiers, is located near the main entrance of the park on Railway Pde.

The most common other countries of birth were Vietnam, comprising 37.6%, Cambodia – 8.0%, China (excludes SARs and Taiwan) – 4.0%, Thailand – 2.1%, and Laos – 1.3%.

The documentary featured assassinated Cabramatta MP John Newman and former Fairfield Councillor Phuong Ngo, who was convicted of his murder, and was funded by SBS and screened by ABC TV.

The Coconut Children by Vivian Pham gritty coming of age romance novel published in 2020 set in Cabramatta's 1990s among the Vietnamese diaspora.

Watching the world from her bedroom window, she exists only in second-hand romance novels and falls for any fast-food employee who happens to spare her a glance.