Glebe goes a little under the radar. It’s not quite Newtown, and a world away from Surry Hills. Its working-class history is outdone by Balmain’s, and if you had to draw a picture that encapsulates Glebe, you might not know where to start.
But look a little closer, and you’ll find it is steeped in the city’s history as a place of protest, a cauldron of counterculture, and a microcosm of debate over Sydney’s look, feel and character. Nic Dalton inside the legendary Half A Cow on Glebe Point Road in 1991. It was on Glebe Point Road that celebrated architect Edmund Thomas Blacket built Bidura in 1858, a two-storey villa in the colonial regency style.
Lately, the heritage-protected building and adjacent former children’s court have sat neglected, attracting vandals and trespassers, while awaiting a residential redevelopment . The site and its future have been core business for the Glebe Society, one of Sydney’s more storied residents’ groups, perhaps best known for its role in the green bans of the 1970s. It held its first meeting at Glebe Town Hall on June 19, 1969, and two years later helped elect to Leichhardt Council a conservationist coalition led by Trotskyist mayor, Nick Origlass.
Of the many battles the society has been involved in since, the greatest was against the planned western and north-western expressways, which were to tear through Ultimo and Glebe. It came to a head in 1974’s so-called “Fig Street confrontation” in adjacent Ultimo, when 12 w.