As you motor along the Pacific Highway, you’ll know you’ve reached Killara when you see the red-brick landmark of the Greengate Hotel. The first hotel was built on the same site in 1832 and the site has been home to a Greengate Hotel ever since.

Basic convenience stores are in the small village shopping centre in Koola Avenue. Larger centres are nearby in Gordon and Lindfield, and the Chatswood shopping precinct is only a short distance away.

Killara’s quiet streets are ideal for walking and running. There are numerous sport and recreation facilities available, including the Killara Golf Club, Killara Lawn Tennis Club and the popular Bert Oldfield Park.

Killara is 15 kilometres north of the CBD and has a train station with fast service into the city.

Killara is an Aboriginal word meaning “permanent”, and this name arrived with the train line in 1899. Until that time it was a rough, timber-gathering area, dotted with small settlements. Timber was cut and then hauled down to the Lane Cove River at Fiddens Wharf, where it was carried by boat to Sydney. When the train came, the area quickly developed as an “attractive and select” suburb as contemporary advertising called it.

Killara has always been an affluent, upper-middle-class suburb, with architecture to fit its status. Killara boasts a mix of elegant, turn-of-the-century homes, Californian Bungalows and more contemporary homes.

Aside from the food served at the Greengate Hotel’s Portico restaurant, Killara residents either travel to nearby Gordon, Lindfield and Roseville, or have the food delivered when cooking is all too hard.

Typically for a Ku-ring-gai suburb, there are many prestigious private and public schools within close proximity of Killara, including Ravenswood, Knox Grammar, Barker, Newington Prep., Pymble Ladies’ College and both Killara Primary and Killara High School. Killara Primary is the only school within the suburb.