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King Street, NewtownKing Street is today the central thoroughfare of the Sydney suburb of Newtown. The street can be divided geographically into two sections, North and South. North King Street, running west-north-west to east-south-east between the University of Sydney and Newtown railway station, at the junction with Enmore Road, is the stretch that most people associate with the name King Street. This area is a very busy thoroughfare, with traffic jams the rule rather than the exception, heavy foot traffic, and a profusion of restaurants, cafs and fashion retailers. Like Parramatta Road, King Street is believed to follow the line of an ancient Aboriginal track that led from from the Sydney Cove area south-west across to Botany Bay. Prior to white settlement, the local Aboriginal population kept the Sydney area well cleared with regular low-level fires. Colonial officer Watkin Tench recorded that during the early years of the colony, the area beyond the settlement was, in effect, open parkland, and that it was possible to walk easily across country from Sydney Cove to Botany Bay. South King Street was by contrast the down-market section, with less traffic and fewer retailers, running southwards from the station to Sydney Park. In recent years, the far northern section seems to have lost most of its lustre, while the central section has become almost glamorous, and South King Street has attracted a cluster of design shops and homeware shops, which along with assorted small quirky businesses and cafes, has made it one of the most interesting strips in Sydney. King Street has also become quite residential above the shops: many development proposals include large numbers of apartments above the retail sections. The street as a whole is the most well preserved Victorian high street in Sydney, and development controls ensure that this will not change, even though it came about by luck. At the crucial time when Victorian buildings where being demolished elsewhere, Newtown was too unfashionable to make development profitable.
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