Stream Hill and Kembla Grange

West Dapto is the fastest growing residential area in New South Wales, outside the Sydney region.

Over the next few decades, the area will develop to have around 19,500 properties that will be home to around 56,500 people. With this level of growth – both now and into the future – Kembla Grange has become a very large suburb. There are a large number of individual lots within the suburb and more lots will be released in the future.

Smaller suburbs function better because individual lots can be found more easily by emergency services (Police, Fire and Ambulance), couriers and other service providers.

Stream Hill is the name of one of the oldest homesteads that is still standing in the Wollongong Local Government Area. It sits on land that was one of 10 veteran grants awarded to military men after their service in the 19th Century. Council now owns the property.

Sandstone mined from the property was used to build the West Dapto Primary School and Residence, as well as the McPhail residence on Sheaffes Road.

We understand the historical significance of the name Kembla Grange. That is why it is being kept for the eastern and larger side of the current suburb. The train station and racecourse are within the area keeping the name Kembla Grange.

Council proposed the name ‘Stream Hill’ to the NSW Geographical Names Board (GNB) after community consultation and Councillor endorsement. The GNB is responsible for assigning place names in NSW and must endorse the name before seeking approval from State Government.

The name was recommended by a Kembla Grange resident as part of a community input process.

These are the steps we followed to decide on the suburb name:

1. Council asked the Dapto / West Dapto community to suggest names in 2020.
2. We created working groups to help guide and support this process.
3. The suggested names were collated, reviewed and a shortlist was created from the names that most closely aligned with the GNB’s guidelines and were also locally significant.
4. The GNB endorsed the name in August 2022 and the Minister approved it in December 2022.

We couldn’t use names like Kembla Grange Estate as that is too similar to Kembla Grange. Similarly, we weren’t able to add suffixes or prefixes like West Kembla Grange or Kembla Grange Heights.

Council followed the guidelines for defining new suburb boundaries provided by the Geographical Names Board when choosing the new suburb boundary for Kembla Grange and Stream Hill. The final boundary has changed from that originally proposed, in response to community submissions.

The south-western portion of Kembla Grange will be renamed Stream Hill, as shown on our Stream Hill and Kembla Grange map PDF, 1005.46 KB.

Council actively tries to identify appropriate Dharawal names when considering new place and facility names, including in this instance.

All names considered were nominated out of the public exhibition process.

Community Working Groups, made up of members from heritage groups, the Dapto community, the Aboriginal community and Traditional Custodians, have worked closely with the project team. Together, we created the shortlist of names for the proposed suburbs that met the criteria and are significant to West Dapto.

Dharawal names were sought and considered during Council’s processes, but they were not able to be progressed.