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The first thing to know about Wenty is how to say it. Just like how sophisticates know Hermes is pronounced without the H, you should be aware the “t” is silent. Locals say “Wenny” or “Wenworfvool” if we’re in a formal setting. Working in an industry that loves to get its knickers in a twist over proper pronunciation, I’m always having to correct people trying to correct me.
“Isn’t it WenT-worTH-Ville?” other broadcast journos have asked, the tiny bits of spit from their perfect plosives landing on my face. But if people (knobs!) insist on calling Paris “Paree” and Barcelona “Barthelona” for the sake of authenticity, then I’m allowed to call Wenty “Wenny”.
Standing sentry over the Paris end of the suburb is Wenty Leagues. It’s the only club to which my family can claim a multi-generational membership. I’m privileged enough to be from an old-Westy family with deep cultural ties. I owe my life to the Parramatta Eels NRL team. They might have won their last premiership four years before I was born, but my parents met at a disco at their leagues club. Given my father is arrhythmic, their dance floor courtship was a miracle. My mother’s romantic explanation? “Dunno. I must have been pissed.”
I enjoyed an exotic childhood. Starting from our first asbestos-filled fibro home in Guildford West where my birth in a heatwave was celebrated with the family’s purchase of our first air conditioner, we moved south-west and then west-west. But Wenny shaped me the most. It’s the reason I became a journalist.
Despite being on track to have more than the required marks to study journalism at uni, my school counsellor told me to apply to a TAFE to study business administration. “Not many girls from here do that,” she explained. “Tell her to get stuffed, Chris Bath is from Wenny,” was my dad’s response. Because, more than anything I am motivated by spite, I became a journalist who ended up doing live crosses to Chris Bath. Instead of doing something useful and stable with my life like studying admin.
Our family home (which is brick now, sorry if that sounds like I’m bragging) is boxed in by both the Cumberland Highway and another busy arterial road. The soothing white noise of semi-trailers chugging up a hill in low gear and sirens have lulled me to sleep at night for decades. When I visit my partner’s home in rural Ireland, the eerie silence jolts me awake.
Back in the old days, your fine dining option in Wenny was the now defunct Chili’s (RIP) which turned into an Outback Steakhouse. Thankfully, immigration saved us from having a culinary palette that stopped short at the Bloomin’ Onion. Wentworthville is the new Harris Park in terms of the variety and quality of its South Asian offerings. Even better, fewer annoying food bloggers from other suburbs have yet to “discover” and write about it with patronising adjectives like “vibrant” and “diverse.” Which are middle-class code words for “working class” and “not completely white”.
The Wentworthville Hotel (or the Wenny Rechs to traditionalists) sometimes stays open until 6am which means we have more nightlife than some inner-city spots. Then it opens again at 9am for shift workers and those on the rollover. Fun for the whole family. It also has a darts board at a time when they’re being gentrified out of pubs for “woke” reasons like “drunk people shouldn’t have access to sharp missiles”. It might just be the last venue in Sydney safe from being bought by Justin Hemmes.
But the best thing about Wenny is its people. It’s not a place for pretenders. After growing up among people who had trades, ABNs and families by 23, I can’t respect a full-grown adult who “doesn’t know what they want” and says they work as a “creative” – an adjective that should have never been made into a noun. I knew Bondi was not the place for me when I saw a man skateboarding barefoot and shirtless down a hill with two yoga mats under his arm. No thanks. In Wenny, people have the decency to squash that kind of thing out of each other.
Wenny is a landing pad for young couples buying their first house and people moving from overseas. Regardless of where we come from or what language we speak at home, we’re united by our shared desire to give our children the best opportunities we can. It’s a suburb of people working hard every day to make that happen. Getting up early to get to the site or commute into the city on packed trains.
The place taught me that someone’s education or job title doesn’t measure their intelligence – just their access to opportunities. That circumstances more than choices might dictate people’s success more than they care to admit.
Being from Wenny is a gift. It just took me a while to realise it after years of voice coaches saying my accent was “very western Sydney”. Whenever I feel myself getting intimidated in work situations, I ask myself “is this worse than the time I had to play netball against a girl with an ankle bracelet or when I had to break up a fight involving a motorcycle gang boss at work as a teenager?” No, then I’m not going to be scared of someone wearing a suit and a pair of R.M. Williams.
Brianna Parkins is a journalist.
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