there was nothing else he could do. He lost his engines and was trading altitude for airspeed. He didn't have much of that either so he had to try and land on a road nearby which most pilots will know is the logical thing to do.
if you lost your engine(s) during take off/within 2-5 minutes after take-off from bankstown you're pretty much screwed tbh.
it depends one which runway he took off from if it was off 11 then he would have been at atleast 1500 and could have made it back to atleast warrick farm maybe even the airport i don't know the glide range, if he took off from 29 then he would have reached atleast 1000 feet in which case he could have easily picked a oval there are quite a few near canley vale, he probably would have had to ground loop it but it would have been 100 times safer than going for a road, roads in sydney are covered in wire and powerpoles and take a guess what he crashed into. i mean it was rush hour if the wires hadn't goten him the cars would have.
if he knew there was a problem that was stoping him reaching those altitudes then he should have turned back well before canley vale.
if i lost my engine on my way out there, i know that i could put the plane down in such a way that we would survive and probably walk away, i mean the plane would never fly again but i rekon it's a fair trade