The goalposts have shifted for my suburb. Luckily, we can claim the Socceroos’ new goalkeeper

For most of my life, home has meant western Sydney. I grew up in Mt Druitt and in the early 1990s, my parents made what felt at the time like a bold decision to move further west and build a home in the very first stage of a brand-new suburb called Glenmore Park. Back then, Glenmore Park still felt like a paddock with street signs. There were no shops, very few trees, and plenty of people wondering why anyone would move “all the way out there”.

Like many suburbs in western Sydney, Glenmore Park carries layers of history that are often overlooked. Long before the housing estates and roundabouts arrived, this land belonged to the Darug people, whose connection to Country stretches back tens of thousands of years. European settlement later transformed the landscape, with large land holdings owned by figures including Henry Cox, who named his residence “Glenmore”. The suburb would eventually inherit that name, although much of the area remained rural for generations.

When we moved here, Glenmore Park still retained some of that semi-rural feeling. Kangaroos were not an unusual sight (and still aren’t). There was no Glenmore Park town centre, no cafe culture, no fast food chains. In fact, for a long time there was just a single takeaway shop that became the unofficial community hub because, frankly, it was all we had.

It’s funny now to think about how exciting the opening of the Glenmore Park Town Centre in 1999 felt. Suddenly we had a supermarket, proper retail stores and somewhere to run into neighbours on a Saturday morning. The centre, now HomeCo Glenmore Park, expanded significantly in 2017, and more recently we’ve seen the development of Glenmore Village, complete with apartments, shops, restaurants and another layer of urban life added to what was once simply rows of family homes.

That transformation mirrors the broader evolution of western Sydney itself. What was once dismissed as “the outskirts” has become one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing regions in the country. And now, with the opening of Western Sydney International Airport later this year, you can feel another major shift approaching.

My own life has been shaped by that growth. I began my studies at what is now Western Sydney University just as Glenmore Park itself was beginning to emerge, and more than 20 years ago I returned to the university as a staff member. Today, I have the privilege of working there as an academic, researching, teaching and supporting students from across western Sydney – many of whom are the first in their families to attend university, just as I once was