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If you’ve been left feeling like Alice through the looking glass in relation to the latest planning decision for Callan Park, nestled on the Parramatta River in Sydney’s Inner West Council area, you are not alone. For those who aren’t yet privy to this magical world of thinking, whereby nothing quite appears as it seems, let me catch you up.
Callan Park, the traditional land of the Wangal people, spans 68 hectares of parkland, heritage and environmental wonderment, managed by multiple jurisdictions including the Greater Sydney Parkland Trust, NSW Health, Transport for NSW and the Inner West Council.
The site today serves multiple purposes, not the least being of Indigenous significance, home to the remnants of pre-colonial Turpentine-Ironbark Forest and other rare and endangered plants that we haven’t yet managed to destroy.
Other features include rock carvings, prominent waterway landmarks, and aquatic animal, bird and insect habitats, as well as serving as critical green and blue infrastructure for active transport, sport, recreation and relaxation.
The site is most famous for being one of Sydney’s first purpose built mental health facilities – ahead of its time in both environmentally sensitive and sustainable architectural function and features, and approach to treatment.
Increasingly, current research is circling back to the restorative powers of nature as an intervention for disease prevention and symptom management. The push toward environmentally sensitive urban design is growing in momentum, as slowly we collectively begin to realise that maybe we have taken the whole concrete jungle thing too far, proving that sometimes we need to look back to move forward, because not every innovation is ahead of us.
It would be an understatement to say the site has a rich colonial history, and in more recent times has become ever more contentious as tensions between the public benefit of such a lucrative slice of foreshore land and neoliberal urban governance ideals collide.
This is to say, this is not Callan Park’s first rodeo, nor is it likely to be its last.
Let me put this in context; Callan Park is deemed so historically significant to Sydney’s history that it has its very own legislative Act – The Callan Park (Special Provisions) Act (2002).
This legislation was designed to protect the site from privatisation and the foreseen consequences therein, such as destruction of cultural significance, natural habitats and historical buildings, and to protect against misuse and development. As it currently stands, this is one of multiple regulatory provisions that govern the site.
Change could mean financial culpability for Callan Park
However, in a throwback somewhat reminiscent of the first pleasure gardens of Victorian England, several legislative changes, including the Greater Sydney Parklands Trust Amendment (review) Bill (2026), are running the gauntlet of the parliamentary process that will effectively force the parkland into financial culpability for its continuance.
Parks have enormous public benefit that go beyond a traditional cost/benefit analysis framework, yet they are expensive.
Other urban infrastructure such as housing, roads, transport, although also expensive, are easier to quantify in a direct return on investment type of way. This is why the government likes them, whereas parks are comparatively viewed as a “nice to have” and are harder to fit into the balance sheet so the numbers flow in the right direction.
It is speculated this new approach of financial sustainability will take the form of new amenity, long-term rental arrangements and user pays models in place as forms of revenue, but instead of caged circus animals and unnetted tight rope walkers in the name of entertainment as back in Queen Victoria’s day, we’ll likely get cafes and car parking.
You can thank the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Paul Scully, for this one, because heaven forbid he or any Sydneysider has to go without freshly toasted banana bread for a morning, or suffer the indignity of tea from a thermos while in the vicinity.
According to Friends of Callan Park, established in 1998 to protect the history, lands and significance of the site, while they broadly welcome the new 10 year plan for the area (the Callan Park Plan of Management 2026 to 2036), a first of its kind for the site, administered under the Greater Sydney Parklands Trust, they’re not thrilled about many of the provisions that claim Indigenous, environmental and heritage protections, yet simultaneously go out of their way to do the opposite.
Friends of Callan Park also point out there is a greater diversity of tree species in Callan Park than there is in New York’s Central Park. Given that gem, one has to wonder what the government is thinking?
Fake turf for sportsfields
On 9 June 2026, the Local Planning Panel for the Inner West Council quite literally rubber stamped one of two allocated sports grounds within the heritage site: The Balmain Sportsground (soccer pitch) off Balmain Road in Lilyfield, to be synthetic turf, with the provision that the surface has to be the appropriate shade of green to match the natural surrounds.
As for the second sports ground, Waterfront Drive sporting ground, on Waterfront Drive Lilyfield, down by the river, that is still in play, with council set to appeal the decision against the installation of synthetic turf in such an environmentally sensitive situation, never mind the potential for microplastics to wash into the river, the same river the government has spent an eye-watering amount of money on cleaning up in recent times, and yes, the same river in which the new Callan Park tidal baths are being built.
According to the Inner West Council website, construction of the Balmain Road field commences in early September and will be finished in time for the 2027 winter season, increasing the playing capacity of the field by 50 per cent.
Heaven forbid he or any Sydneysider has to go without freshly toasted banana bread for a morning, or suffer the indignity of tea from a thermos while in the vicinity.
The approved proposal accomplishes this through an increase in formal playable hours from 4 pm to 9 pm on weeknights and 8 am to 5.00 pm on weekends, to 4:00 pm to 10 pm on weeknights and 8:00 am to 10 pm on weekends.
For the rest of the time, if otherwise not in use by schools or other one-off situations in accordance with council bookings and policies, the pitch will be available for conditional public use, including no dogs allowed on the surface itself and a proposal for a public awareness campaign regarding boot brushing when leaving the field as a means of not carrying synthetic fibres to the surrounding natural environment on the souls of shoes. Who wants a picnic?
The amenity will be downgraded
The reportedly $3.5 million “downgrade” of the natural amenity received 748 submissions regarding its transformation when on public exhibition.
The report notes that owing to the volume of submissions and scale of the map, objectors are unable to be shown, proving that the long standing tensions of urban planning between community demand and council capacity to deliver are alive and well.
In defence of the Inner West Council decision to “fake it till you make it” under the guise of increased playing time, they’re not the only local council to have gone down this slippery slope of colour it green and name it as nature, despite the known environmental contamination effects.
Contaminating fake grass is a global thing, but the trend is to stop it
This is happening in communities across Australia. Actually, it is a global phenomenon, with some countries now pulling back on its use and returning to natural turf. The NSW Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer, in its 2023 report, the Independent Review into the Design, Use and Impacts of Synthetic Turf in Public Open Spaces, all but stopped short of recommending synthetic turf be discontinued as an option.
Proponents of synthetic turf argue that it has progressed in leaps and bounds, is more sustainable than ever with semi-natural materials included as part of the build, decreases building and ongoing maintenance costs, increases usage, and with its “all weather” resistant marking, it is the obvious choice when it comes to solving the crisis of lack of active open space. All those in favour?
The long standing tensions of urban planning between community demand and council capacity to deliver are alive and well.
Opponents of synthetic turf cite the overwhelming evidence of microplastics leaking into the surrounding environment and destroying soil quality.
It also damages insect habitats and bird food chains, as well as increases immediate urban heat island effects, poor drainage resulting in higher maintenance costs, contribution to landfill and lack of recyclable materials or infrastructure to support it if and when it is available.
The material can lead to player injury due to its slippery nature when wet and potential for burns when dry.
And it’s way less flexible for different sports than natural turf
There is an actual reduction in adaptability of the playing surface owing to the different engineering and surfaces required for different sports. For example, the structural infill and surface based requirements for building a synthetic hockey field are vastly different to those of a synthetic soccer pitch, and they cannot be easily swapped out as the season or demand requires.
As it stands, the current ovals in question double as sporting fields, off-leash dog areas and general recreation spaces.
Placing synthetic over the top is going to severely limit those uses. This is because with natural grass, switching between sporting codes can be as simple as a quick mow and reallocating temporary field markings from one sport to another. A synthetic surface is less flexible.
Thus, while the common argument is that synthetic turf increases playing capacity, it is not without its trade-offs, nor does it address that other elephant in the room. I’m talking about broader interconnected but no less systemic barriers involved in public health interventions.
These go beyond the immediacy of playing field surfaces to such things as shifting community demand away from formalised sports and sports clubs to other active pursuits, long standing lower female participation in sport, and lack of connectivity between wider infrastructure elements such as appropriately timed and situated public transport.
Therefore, for the Inner West Council to essentially weaponise increased inclusion for people with disabilities and female participation as a justification for its decision to create a life-size Barbie doll’s dreamhouse accessory is an overly simplistic, if not a very long bow to draw.
One could argue there is an awful lot of conjecture wrapped up in this decision about who, how, why, and what people play.
Removing people’s choice for recreation and effectively narrowing them into a facility and then calling it popular when it is one of the few options available does not make for a healthy, well-rounded society.
The solutions exist
So, what’s the solution? I hear you ask.
Rather than destroy our already fragile ecosystems with synthetic surfaces, what if we utilised alternative spaces such as the tops of large retail buildings such as Westfield, existing but designated parking station levels, empty factory warehouses, and/or chronically vacant high-street frontages such as those dotted across suburban mixed use developments?
For example, Sydney has a lot of empty rooftops, but an alarmingly small percentage of usable public open space, let alone active open space when measured in relation to other infrastructure.
If we continually pave over it, no matter what the material, chances are we’re never going to get it back. Therefore, placing another layer of synthetic something over an already concretised infrastructure in the name of addressing an amenity shortfall and increasing societal access to physical activity is not the worst idea.
This is not to suggest parks, sportsgrounds, urban amenity and services should remain as static infrastructure.
History shows us just how well these natural legacies adjust to and reflect changing social norms, wants and expectations, even if we cannot always agree on what those might be, particularly in this era of commodification. For example, The Fifth Estate has made no secret of the fact that it would like to see Callan Park rewilded entirely.
I would settle for no synthetic turf, and a restoration or re-creation of the old buildings for community use, and the expansion of our rare trees and plants, whereas the government appears to want its cake and to eat it, and to paint the roses red in the process. So, who is right?
We are left with a conundrum, where unlike Alice, we cannot awaken to find it has all been a dream.
The reality is, Callan Park is under threat, and the legislation is unlikely to protect it from further degradation under the name of progress. One can only hope that the government will come to its senses and, for the love of our essential green and blue infrastructure, the parkland will be preserved and protected for generations to come, just as the regulation and supporting policy instruments promise.
Surely when it comes to active open space such as fixed position sports fields and other recreational facilities we can do better. We can get more innovative. If we have to use plastic, can we at least be a bit clever and classy about it?
Admittedly, it will take some “tinkering” with what we already have, but we are a nation full of smart people with smart ideas and smart technology. Anyone?
