Macdonaldtown is an urban locality in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, in the state of New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Macdonaldtown is located 4 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district

Sydney central business district

The Sydney central business district is the main commercial centre of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It extends southwards for about 3 kilometres from Sydney Cove, the point of first European settlement. Its north–south axis runs from Circular Quay in the north to Central railway station in...

, within the suburb of Newtown

Newtown, New South Wales

Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Marrickville Council in the state of New South Wales, Australia....

 and adjacent to Erskineville

Erskineville, New South Wales

Erskineville is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Erskineville is located about 3 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney...

. Macdonaldtown is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney

City of Sydney

The City of Sydney is the Local Government Area covering the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs of the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, Australia...

 and informally part of the region of the Inner West

Inner West (Sydney)

The Inner West is a general term which is used to describe the metropolitan area directly to the west of the Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia...

. The locality is around Macdonaldtown railway station, on the Inner West line of the City Rail network.

History

The area was originally part of a grant made to Irishman, Nicholas Devine, who arrived in 1790 as the first principal superintendent of convicts. Devine built his homestead near the corner of Erskineville Road and George Street. An error about the naming of Macdonaldtown is often repeated in publications - viz. "A Mr Macdonald, who owned a large ironmongery at the corner of George and Market Streets in the city, lived near the present Macdonaldtown station and was a major property owner here." The source of the name "Macdonaltown" has a very different story, involving a scandal of forged documents consigning Devine's property to a convict. In 1846 the property in the south of Erskineville owned by Stephen Macdonald was subdivided and advertised with the name "Macdonald Town". Macdonaldtown, the whole suburb, was incorporated as a local government area in 1872 and was renamed as Erskineville in 1893.

External links

• Status as urban locality, not a suburb.