A talk by Lyn Collingwood
When: Saturday 27 June 2026. This talk will take place after the society’s AGM which will commence at 10.30 and will run for approximately 30 minutes.
Where: St. Peter’s Anglican Church, 187 The Prince’s Highway, St. Peters, NSW 2044.
Dover Heights is known today as one of Australia’s wealthiest suburbs but what of its past? There has never been a written history of the suburb … until now.
Marrickville Heritage Society member Lyn Collingwood grew up in Dover Heights when it still had undeveloped areas of bush. Lyn has now written a history: Dover Heights: rocks and sand they couldn’t sell.
Lyn traces the transformation of an area of windswept scrub along the ocean cliffs with plenty of snakes but no natural attractions into today’s patchwork of mansions, manicured lawns and swimming pools.
Image: State Library of New South Wales
It wasn’t until the 1880s land boom that speculators focused their attention on one of eastern Sydney’s remaining undeveloped areas. But buyers were few when Dover Heights was first subdivided.
With no public transport the biggest problem was getting there. For decades, real estate agents pushed the myth that a tramline would run through from North Bondi to Vaucluse. That never happened! It was only with increased car ownership and post-World War II migration that settlement boomed.
Lyn Collingwood has been a school teacher, an editor, a researcher and an actor.
Lyn is a life member of the New Theatre, and with Kim Knuckey presented a history of the theatre to a society meeting in 2024. For thirteen years Lyn also played resident gossip Colleen Smart in the Australian soap opera Home and Away.
As an editor and researcher Lyn has worked on The Australian Encyclopaedia, the 21st Century Junior World Encyclopedia and Everyman’s 30-volume New Age Encyclopedia. An active member of the Glebe Society Lyn is also a regular contributor to it’s monthly Bulletin.
Copies of Lyn’s book Dover Heights: rocks and sand they couldn’t sell will be available for $50 at the meeting. Cash only please.
Marrickville Heritage Society 