Fairfield is a suburb of Western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Being in the centre of the Cumberland Plain, Fairfield is located west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative heart of the Fairfield City Council (local government area) – despite a very small portion of it belonging to the Cumberland Council. Fairfield supports a mixture of commercial and residential developments, mostly characterised by medium-density buildings and some new high-rise apartments.

Fairfield is one of the most multicultural and culturally diverse cities in Australia, with more than half of the residents having been born overseas, mostly in non-English speaking countries. The majority of the suburb's dwellers speak a language other than English at home, with the two most common ones being Arabic and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. Fairfield is an ethnic enclave of Assyrian Christians (mostly from Iraq, and more recently Syria),B. Furze, P. Savy, R. Brym, J. Lie, Sociology in Today's World, 2008, p. 349 along with newer Sunni Iraqi arrivals. Fairfield's large Iraqi and Assyrian community has had the media describe the suburb as Little Iraq or Little Assyria.

History European settlement, 1780s–1810s Prior to European settlement, Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal-Gandangara tribe have lived in the Fairfield area for more than 30,000 years. The earliest recorded white settlement in the Fairfield district is described in William Bradley's Journal where he noted an expedition from Rose Hill to Prospect Creek to determine whether Prospect Creek led to Botany Bay. Bradley described a place on the Creek where the water changed from fresh to salt with a drop of . The presence of salt water confirmed Prospect Creek's connection to the sea.A Voyage to New South Wales – William Bradley NLA No.Aus 68-1986 p168

Gabriel Louis Marie Huon de Kerrileau, a Breton soldier in the NSW Corps arrived in the colony in 1794, having fled France during the French Revolution. In 1807 he received a grant of in the centre of Fairfield, which he named Castel Paul. This was an Englished form of the town in which he was born in Brittany, Kastell-Paol, Saint-Pol-de-Léon in French. By 1814 Castel Paul had been combined, by subsequent owners, with several similarly sized grants to form a largely uncleared estate.

Early development, 1820s–1920s The free settler John Horsley purchased the estate in that year and named it Mark Lodge, after family properties in Essex, England.NSWBMD V18341819, 18/1834; Horsley, John Horsley, a Magistrate and Coroner at Liverpool (1825-1834), and his large family were among the pioneers of white settlement in the Fairfield District. Later, a Colonial Treasurer, Thomas Ware Smart (1810–1881) bought the estate and in the 1860s built the mansion, 'Fairfield House'.The Book of Sydney Suburbs, Compiled by Frances Pollon, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, Published in Australia , page 103

Fairfield railway station was opened in 1856 and has the oldest surviving railway building in New South Wales. Development began in the mid 19th century supported by railway construction in 1856. The railway aided with the enlargement of local industries including timber, fruit development and agricultural produce. Local directories published in 1919 indicate that most Fairfield residents were employed as farmers, fruit growers, poultry farmers or orchardists. Around the start of the 20th century the area had a population of 2,500 people and with fertile soils, produced crops for distribution in Sydney. Electricity was connected in 1921.Sydney's Forgotten Quarry Railways Oakes, John pp28-37 John James Woods, born in 1876 in County Tyrone, Ireland, arrived in Fairfield in 1895 and went on to establish JJ Woods and Sons Carriers Pty Ltd in the early 20th century. Starting with horse-drawn carts, the business grew into a major transport company. By the time of Woods’s death, it operated around 40 trucks and played a key role in Fairfield’s transformation from a rural town into a thriving urban centre.

Post-war period, 1940s–1980s Rapid population increase after World War II saw the settlement of many ex-service men and European migrants, with Ware Street becoming the new main street, which featured the city's only escalator. The street at that time featured prominent hardware, furniture, menswear and homeware stores, including a Bing Lee. Large scale Housing Commission development in the 1950s swelled the population to 38,000. By the 1950s, Fairfield town centre had developed into a major regional commercial centre serving the surrounding suburbs, with The Crescent forming its principal retail and business precinct. The opening of the Crescent Theatre in 1934 stimulated the growth of additional cinemas across the district, and by the 1950s it had become a popular entertainment venue. Renamed Hoyts Crescent in 1944, the theatre closed in 1967. Its auditorium was demolished in 2016, although the original façade was retained. The Civic Centre was established in the 1960s in Spencer Street and featured many businesses, including the nearby Civic Hotel. Fairfield Hospital was opened in September 1956 on The Horsley Drive in Carramar, but was relocated to Prairiewood in 1988 with the old site converted into a Karitane infant, Early childhood family education and perinatal mental health centre.The Heritage of Australia, Macmillan Company, 1981, p.2/24

By 1979, the population had reached 120,000 and the city was becoming one of the larger Local Government Areas in New South Wales. In the early 1980s, Fairfield Forum was opened and Ware Street was shut for traffic, with a pedestrian zone established in its stead with a water fountain imported from Italy being the ornament of the civic area. However, the pedestrian plaza was deemed unsuccessful, despite the annual street parades occurring there, and thus Ware Street once again was open to traffic.Fairfield City Council (1999) Management Plan for Fairfield City 1999-2003 Fairfield City Council

Rapid growth, 1980s–present During the mid to late 1980s Iran–Iraq War, large number of Assyrians fled Iraq and settled in Fairfield, making it the most popular settlement for Assyrians. In 1990, Neeta City was opened due to the rapid growth of Fairfield's commercial centre. An amphitheatre situated in Spencer Street with chess board was closed in the early 2000s with the street reopening to traffic. In the mid-2000s, Fairfield's first high rise apartment building (around 9 to 11 storeys) was constructed, with a number of other high rise buildings which were built consequentially throughout the city centre.Gorgees, P. 2003, 'The Assyrian Community’s Continued Needs in the Fairfield LGA', in Checking the Pulse of Fairfield―Conference Report, Fairfield Migrant Resource Centre, Cabramatta.

In 2015, the Abbott government granted 12,000 extra humanitarian visas to persecuted groups in the war-torn Middle Eastern countries, namely Syria. The Department of Social Services confirmed that 11,400 Iraqi and Syrian refugees (many of whom being Assyrian) were admitted to Australia as part of its one-off humanitarian intake, with half of them primarily settling in Fairfield and also Liverpool. Fairfield City accommodated 3,000 humanitarian arrivals in 2016, taking in 75% of all western Sydney's refugee intake, with Liverpool City Council second at 14%. Fairfield City Centre today features a concoction of retail, commercial and residential developments, including medium density edifices and medium to high-rise shop-top housing developments.

In July 2021, Fairfield was one of the "suburbs of concern" and became a hotspot due to rising COVID-19 cases in the region that resulted in a strict lockdown in the area, transforming the CBD into a ghost town, with heavy police patrol compliance checks. Fines were issued for those who did not comply with the state public health order.COVID-19 update: During the start of the delta wave delta-strain in NSW, Gladys Berejiklian singled out the Fairfield City local government area as NSW records 112 cases by Crystal Wu from Sky News Australia. 12 July 2021 Workers from Fairfield were ordered to stay at home by NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian unless they had leave the house for emergency reasons or that they had produced a negative COVID-19 test.NSW Covid update: 89 new cases and second death as mandatory testing brought in for Fairfield workers by Josh Taylor from The Guardian

Geography

Much of the original bushland cover within the city has been cleared through past land management practices. A few small areas of this original bushland remain, including examples of Cumberland Plain vegetation and Cooks River/Castlereagh Ironbark Forest, which are listed under the Threatened Species Conservation Act. The Australian white ibis are specifically present in The Crescent, opposite of the train station. Although the suburb is in the Fairfield LGA area, only one very small part of it falls in the Cumberland City Council area; Bell Crescent, which is a dead-end street just east of Prospect Creek. The Horsley Drive has the greatest street-tree canopy cover in Fairfield, at approximately 6,292 m², followed by Sackville Street (4,800 m²), Railway Parade (4,615 m²) and Hamilton Road (4,161 m²).

Eight creeks, 80 kilometres in length, have their headwaters in Fairfield City and flow into the Georges River and Hawkesbury Nepean catchments. The impact of development over the past 50 years has resulted in severe degradation of the natural habitat in the creek banks and water quality has been assessed as very poor in recent years. Strategies are being implemented so that this trend is being reversed. De Freitas Wetland is a natural wetland located near Prospect Creek at Vine Street. Air quality in the city is heavily impacted upon by an insufficiently integrated public transport system, creating an over reliance upon private vehicles for moving people and freight. Fairfield CBD lies on Cenozoic alluvial terrace and floodplain deposits (particularly the areas near Prospect Creek), with the surrounding elevated areas being on older, Middle Triassic Bringelly Shale. The suburb gives its name to the Fairfield Basin, a broad synclinal geological structure within the Sydney Basin. The Fairfield Basin forms one of the major structural sub-basins beneath the Cumberland Plain and preserves substantial thicknesses of the Wianamatta Group.

Climate Fairfield has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa). Summer weather may come from north-east (humid) or the north west (dry). Fairfield is usually a few degrees warmer than Sydney on summer days and a few degrees cooler on winter nights. There could be a temperature differential of 5 degrees Celsius in summer due to sea breezes in the City that don't generally penetrate inland, and in extreme cases there could be a 10 degrees differential. It receives less annual rain than Sydney CBD by about 400mm. Late winter and early spring receive the least rainfall, whilst late summer and autumn receive more rain.

Commercial area

Fairfield consists of a combination of main street retail centred in Smart and Ware Streets, arcade and larger shopping centres, with a variety of activities including retail, café/restaurant/take away foods, supermarkets (with some displayed in a bazaar-style environment), personal services and commercial uses. A couple of shop fronts along The Crescent are in the Federation and Art Deco style, which date from the late 1890s to 1920s, respectively, reflecting its former role as an early main street. The CBD is surrounded by a halo of three-storey residential flats, which are beneficial for pedestrian activity to the City Centre. The community holds public gathering and interaction in a high regard, which is manifested by the CBD's active shopping streets and daily social assemblage for playing chess on Kenyon Street.