Belfield

The signature of the Cooks River suburb of Belfield in Sydney's inner-west is the distinctive range of state homes built for World War I Diggers in the 1920s.

The homes are characterised by roughcast walls, lattice-decorated verandah posts, six-paned windows, low-pitched roofs and timber gables. The Belfield war service homes set the pace for a national program to house those who'd survived the war to end all wars.

And, as the returned servicemen and their families moved into the new bungalows, the names of streets in the City of Canterbury were changed to reflect the Belfield connection with the Great War. Wattle Street, for example, became Bazentin, the name of a French village near Pozieres on the Somme battlefield where so many Australians served with great distinction.

For many years the Belmore Sports Ground, which sits astride Belfield"s south-eastern boundary, was the headquarters of the doughty Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, traditionally one of the strongest clubs in the National Rugby League.