Oran Park, the suburb that's grown from a population of 0 to 7500 in eight years
By Garry Maddox
20 April 2018 — 8:28pm
In numbers
- New homes ready each week
12-15
- Houses under construction
400
- Homes to be built each year
600-800
Lisa Tonkin and Matthew Houston camped for a week to buy a block of land on the site of the former Oran Park racetrack in south-western Sydney. They slept in a car, swapping shifts when the other went to work, and snapped up a home site on the old racetrack straight for $250,000.
Cows were grazing as bulldozers cleared the land nearby at the time.
Five years on, the couple share a spacious four-bedroom house - Houston jokes he's never even been in one of the bedrooms - with their infant son Archer and a sloppy Great Dane called Zelda. Almost 3000 homes have sprung up around them as the population of Oran Park Town has zoomed from zero to an estimated 7500 in eight years.
Houston, 36, is from Campbelltown, 14 kilometres to the south-west. Tonkin, 33, grew up in Silverdale, 30 kilometres in the opposite direction. They both work for local councils: him in IT, her in community events.
"It was a good fit for us," Houston says. "About half way between both families. A nice growing area."
Tonkin adds: "We didn't have anything when we first moved in - they were still building the shops and the start of the restaurants - so we've watched them all from scratch."
more here:
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