Shutters and Blinds Wollongong

Wollongong sits on the traditional lands of the Dharawal people, who lived along this stretch of coast and the Lake Illawarra shoreline for thousands of years before European arrival. The name is widely understood to come from a Dharawal word, with recorded meanings ranging from the sound of the sea to seas of the south. George Bass and Matthew Flinders explored this coastline in 1796, and cedar getters followed within a couple of decades, working the rainforest that once ran down the escarpment. The town was surveyed in 1834 and a harbour was cut into the rock at Belmore Basin soon after, giving the district a way to ship out cedar and, before long, coal. Mining began on the escarpment at Mount Keira in the 1840s and shaped the region for more than a century. The Illawarra railway line reached Wollongong in 1887, and the opening of the steelworks at Port Kembla in the 1920s turned a string of coastal villages into an industrial city. Today Wollongong is the third largest city in New South Wales, and its housing tells that whole story at once. There are Federation and interwar cottages through Thirroul, Austinmer and Bulli, block after block of post-war brick in Figtree, Unanderra and Warrawong, grand older homes on the escarpment side at Mount Pleasant and Mangerton, and a growing number of apartments around the CBD and North Wollongong beach. The University of Wollongong has added a large rental market through Gwynneville and Keiraville on top of all of it. That variety is exactly why window furnishings in Wollongong cannot be bought off a shelf. Older cottages have openings that have moved over a century and rarely sit square, so plantation shutters need to be measured and made to the reveal rather than trimmed on site. Newer apartments and townhouses tend to suit roller blinds, double roller blinds and motorised blinds on the taller windows. And because Wollongong is a coastal city, salt and humidity matter: polymer and aluminium shutters hold up near the beach where painted timber will eventually chalk, and marine-grade mesh is worth specifying on any screen door within reach of the sea air. Wollongong also gets a genuine western sun off the escarpment through the afternoon and hard glare off the water, so blockout roller blinds, honeycomb blinds and outdoor blinds do real work here rather than simply finishing a room. Fusion Shutters and Blinds is proud to serve the Wollongong community, from the northern beaches through the CBD and out to the southern suburbs, with custom shutters, blinds, curtains and awnings measured, made and installed to suit the way local homes are actually built.