Macquarie Park, NSW 2113

Sydney's corporate and technology hub: Macquarie Park sits 13 km north-west of the CBD in the City of Ryde and pairs one of Australia's largest business parks with Macquarie University's main campus and Macquarie Centre. The suburb concept was modelled on the hi-tech industrial area around Stanford University in Palo Alto — the mid-1960s saw the university established and 'Green Belt' bushland rezoned for the Macquarie Park Employment Area, and the suburb quickly gained a reputation as a leading high-tech industrial area. Macquarie Park was part of North Ryde until it was gazetted as a separate suburb on 5 February 1999, and many businesses still use 'North Ryde' as their address. Today it is a dense, transit-oriented, apartment-dominated suburb: at the 2021 census it recorded 11,071 residents with a median age of just 31 — an over-representation of younger adults and students compared with the national median of 38 — with 29% of residents aged 20–29 and most working in professional occupations. Glossy apartment towers now rise around the two metro stations and along the Waterloo Road–Herring Road corridor, giving the suburb an unmistakably commercial, corporate-campus character.

At a Glance

Transport

Macquarie Park has two Sydney Metro stations within the suburb on the Metro North West & Bankstown Line — Macquarie Park station (on Lane Cove Road) and Macquarie University station (at the university campus, serving both the campus and Macquarie Centre) — with North Ryde station just beyond the southern boundary. The M2 Hills Motorway runs through the northern part of the suburb, and bus services by Busways, CDC NSW and Transit Systems NSW connect the business park and university precinct to surrounding districts. Both railway stations were originally opened on the Epping–Chatswood heavy-rail link and were converted to turn-up-and-go metro services as part of the Sydney Metro project, which put the suburb on a direct, frequent line to the CBD.

Schools

Macquarie Park currently has no public school inside the suburb — its high-rise, student-and-professional population (just 11.1% of residents aged 0–14 at the 2021 census) has kept local school demand low. Government primary catchments for the suburb are Kent Road Public School (126 Kent Road) in immediately adjacent Marsfield — a high-ranking NSW government primary whose intake area covers Macquarie Park — and North Ryde Public School in adjacent North Ryde. That changes in 2027: Macquarie Park Public School, a new 750-place K–6 government primary, is under construction within Frasers Property's Midtown MacPark development in the suburb and will open in 2027, with intake-area adjustments already made to the Kent Road and North Ryde PS catchments (NSW School Infrastructure; Frasers Property). For secondary schooling, Epping Boys High School (government boys' high school) is on Vimiera Road in immediately adjacent Marsfield, and Ryde Secondary College is the main co-ed government option in the wider district.

Universities

Macquarie University's main Wallumattagal campus is physically in-suburb: it occupies a 126-hectare, park-like site inside Macquarie Park beside the high-technology corridor, one of Australia's largest universities. The campus carries the university's teaching, research and residential life — affiliated residential colleges including Dunmore Lang College and Robert Menzies College sit within the suburb, Macquarie University Hospital and the Cochlear research centre operate within the university grounds, and the campus has its own Sydney Metro station (Macquarie University station) at its edge. Excelsia College, an independent Christian tertiary college, also moved to a Macquarie Park campus in 2016, reinforcing the suburb's education-precinct role.

Shopping & Amenities

Macquarie Centre is the suburb's retail anchor — a four-level regional centre of about 134,900 m² with around 350 stores and 10 anchor tenants, opened on 17 November 1981 opposite the university's main campus and now the largest suburban shopping centre in Sydney, with a full-size Olympic ice rink (Macquarie Ice Rink, home of the Sydney Bears and Sydney Ice Dogs) and a cinema complex. The centre is directly connected to Macquarie University metro station, and the wider university and business-park precincts support 'a wide variety of restaurants and cafes' — Macquarie Park is known as a major dining destination in Sydney's Northern Suburbs. Business-park retail, gyms and services cluster around the Waterloo Road and Talavera Road commercial towers.

Parks & Outdoors

Macquarie Park is surprisingly green for a business park — about 27 parks covering nearly 36.8% of the suburb, largely the university campus, creek corridors and the bushland of the Lane Cove River valley at its eastern edge. Shrimptons Creek, a 3.3 km tributary of the Lane Cove River, runs along the suburb's western boundary with Marsfield, its bushwalk and cycleway threading through parkland the City of Ryde is progressively rehabilitating (City of Ryde; WeekendNotes). Macquarie University's 126-hectare campus doubles as open space, with its lawns, playing fields and aquatic centre open to the community, and the suburb's north-eastern fringe drops into the Lane Cove River bushland linking toward Lane Cove National Park.

Property Market

The median house price in Macquarie Park was around ~$2.4M (median house value $2,400,576 as at 31 Jan 2026, Cotality via OnTheHouse) — based on a very small number of sales, as freestanding houses are rare in this apartment-dominated suburb (mid-2026). See our full Sydney property price map for how the suburb compares across the city. Macquarie Park is fundamentally a unit market: it has about 10,124 properties, almost entirely high-rise apartments delivered around the metro stations, the university and the business park since the 2000s, with strong investor and professional-renter demand. Houses are confined to a small older pocket and trade around the $2.4M Cotality median but rarely come to market, so house medians are volatile. The unit median of ~$896K (Jan 2026) runs below the ~$950K–$1.1M guides common on brand-new stock in the Lachlan's Line and Waterloo Road towers, reflecting resale stock across the suburb's many older apartment blocks.

New Developments

Sydney Metro was the suburb's catalyst — Macquarie Park and Macquarie University stations were converted from the Epping–Chatswood line to Metro North West & Bankstown Line services, putting the precinct on a direct 19-minute line to the CBD and unlocking towers around both stations. Midtown MacPark — Frasers Property Australia's $2.2 billion redevelopment of the 8.2-hectare Ivanhoe Estate, the NSW Government's pioneer Communities Plus project mixing social, affordable and market housing — has begun welcoming residents and includes the new Macquarie Park Public School opening 2027 on site. Lachlan's Line — the Landcom-led urban renewal precinct on the former industrial land off Waterloo Road beside Macquarie Park station — has seen its subdivision completed (2016) and footbridge built (2020), and Landmark Group has since paid north of $130 million for a high-density site there with plans for about 950 apartments. The NSW Government's Macquarie University station 'Herring Road' growth precinct rezoning (finalised September 2015) targeted up to 2,400 new homes by 2021 and 5,800 by 2031 within a 10-minute walk of the station, and a 20-year strategy on exhibition plans about 7,600 new homes for Macquarie Park. Commercial renewal continues alongside residential growth — Trilogy apartments at 100 Talavera Road and Macquarie Technology Group's land purchase for a $3 billion data-centre expansion between Talavera Road and the M2 are recent markers (urban.com.au; The Nightly).

Jobs & Local Economy

Macquarie Park is one of NSW's biggest employment concentrations — it recorded 32,308 jobs in 2001, making it the fourth-largest job centre in the state after the Sydney CBD, North Sydney and Parramatta, and it anchors the 'Sydney global economic corridor'. Major corporate campuses are dotted through the business park: Optus's national headquarters at 1 Lyonpark Road (the telco employs roughly 5,000–10,000 people there) and Foxtel's head office at 5 Thomas Holt Drive beside Macquarie Park station are the best known (SignalHire; Chamber of Commerce; Mapcarta). Education and health add a second employment pillar in-suburb: Macquarie University, Macquarie University Hospital and the Cochlear research centre sit on the campus, and Macquarie Centre (350 stores) plus the business park's cafes and retail provide the service jobs. Data-centre and tech investment is expanding the precinct's role further (The Nightly).

Nearby Suburbs

North Ryde, Marsfield, Epping, Ryde, Eastwood

Sources & method

Researched 4 September 2026 from named public sources — census and government records, transport authorities, council and planning documents — plus published sales data. Where sources disagree on a figure, the guide says so rather than picking one.

Sources cited in this guide:

• Wikipedia — Macquarie Park
• Wikipedia — Macquarie University
• NSW Government

Corrections are welcome — if something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

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