If you ask a Sydneysider where the suburb of Macdonaldtown is, they wouldn't be able to tell you. Why? It doesn’t exist anymore. It turns out that the reason feeds into Sydney’s dark and spooky past – but more on that later*. Now, all that remains of Macdonaldtown is a 146-year-old train station with a confusing name and a double platform with a wheelchair-friendly payphone that can only be accessed by a flight of stairs. (Just some of the reasons Sydney commentator Joe Hildebrand has referred to it as “Sydney’s stupidest train station”.)
The $2.3 million dollars to renovate the train station (which, these days, is in Erskineville) comes out of the NSW Government’s $800 million allocated to the Safe and Accessible Transport Program. Accessibility is the main priority of the overhaul, with plans to build ramps or lifts to the station’s two platforms.
Other plans for the Macdonaldtown project include improved signage, a family toilet, accessible parking spaces, additional lighting and CCTV. After further consultation and planning, the project is expected to start mid-next year and be done by the end of 2026.
Despite the station being awkwardly situated between two more popular train stations – Erskineville and Redfern – Macdonaldtown deserves a little tender love and care, being Sydney’s 126th most used station out of 228 options.
*What countless commuters passing through Macdonaldtown might not know is about its gruesome history – a history that led to the erasure of the suburb's name. The area was renamed after the local Reverend George’s "Erskine’s villa" because they wanted the blue-collar town to have a nice, "virtuous" name. What really hurried along the name change, though, was the uncovering of news about a serial killer couple who targeted babies and buried them in their Macdonaldtown property yard. Warning: Stop reading now if you're sensitive to horror stories, especially those related to child abuse.
Known as the Makin Baby Farmers, the horrific story goes that Macdonaldtown residents John and Sarah Makin used to respond to offers from desperate mothers to take care of their babies in exchange for payment. It wasn’t until a worker found the cause of a blocked pipe in their rental – two deceased children – that The Makins were found out.
Whether you'd call it Sydney's stupidest train station, or the one with the darkest history, it's soon to be “Sydney’s most newly renovated station” – albeit for a short time, as the NSW Government ploughs on with more big updates to our city's train network.
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