The Block (Sydney)
The Block has historically been the subject of large protests, starting in the early 1970s, when landlords in the area conducted a campaign of evicting all Aboriginal residents.
[2][3] Developer Ian Kiernan, who later founded Clean Up Australia, acquired around half of the housing in The Block in the early 1970s via his company Tierra del Fuego.
[1] A group of campaigners, led by future judge Bob Bellear and his wife Kay, along with the Catholic priest Ted Kennedy, lobbied the federal Whitlam government, who bought up Kiernan's and other private properties.
[5] Other people involved in the early days were Bob's brother Sol Bellear; Lyall Munro Jnr and his wife Jenny Munro; Gary Foley; Paul Coe and his sister Isabel Coe; Billy Craigie (later Isabel's husband); Gary Williams; Naomi Mayers;[10] retired boxer Dick Blair (1937–2013),[11] aka Pastor Richard Phillips,[12] then a field officer for South Sydney Community Aid;[5] and non-Indigenous architect Col James (1936–2013).
[1] A year after the Fraser government was elected in 1975, it terminated capital works funding to The Block, leading to many homes falling into disrepair.
Over the following few years, the AHCacquired almost half the properties on the Block, and the election of the Hawke–Keating government in 1983 led to renewed support for the Aboriginal community in Redfern.
Leonie Sandercock, then professor of planning at Macquarie University, Canadian social planner Wendy Sarkissian, Col James, and Ivor Lloyd, an African American man, were involved in the study.
Recommending that much of the English-style terraced housing, which faced and west, should be demolished, this led to a "third phase" of development around 2002, in which of Aboriginal culture and needs should be prioritised.
[1] The 2002-4 Community Social Plan developed by Angie Pitts for AHC won an international award for its crime prevention through environmental design.
By 2014, the character was changing; young professionals were moving into the area, and there were houses advertised for rent in Eveleigh Street for between A$1000 and A$1200 per week.
[18] Demolition of The Block was announced in late 2010,[19] which led to some opposition, including the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy (based on the idea of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy set up in Canberra in 1972), set up in 2014 by Lyall Munro Jnr, his wife Jenny Munro, and other activists, to protest against the redevelopment.
[17] On 14 June 2017, AHC submitted the development application to the NSW Department of Planning for Precinct 3, the Col James Accommodation, comprising 522 rooms,[9] located on the eastern side of Eveleigh Street, next to the railway line.
[21] In June 2019, the iconic mural featuring the Aboriginal Flag, painted on the side of the Elouera Tony Mundine Gym, was demolished.
[23] A complex designed by Nordon Jago comprising housing, gymnasium, and Indigenous art gallery was recognised at the Urban Taskforce Development Excellence Awards in November 2021.
Hickey died after, while on his bicycle, he collided with a protruding gutter, was flung into the air and was impaled on a 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) fence outside a block of units off Phillip Street, Waterloo, as he was fleeing police.
