Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names of people who have died.
Parramatta is only ten months younger than Sydney, and for the first fifty-odd years of the colony a fair case could be made that it mattered more. The governors lived there when they could, the food that kept everyone alive was grown there, and the Macarthurs, the Marsdens and the Harrises all built there. Today it's the River City, Sydney's second CBD, with a light rail line down Church Street and a new Powerhouse museum on the river bank. But walk a few hundred metres in any direction from the station and you're standing in the 1790s.
This page is my attempt to put the whole story in one place: the Burramattagal and the place of eels, Rose Hill and the government farm, James Ruse, Old Government House and the Domain, St John's and its graveyard, Elizabeth Farm, the convict institutions, the old pubs, the river ferries, the railway and the Roxy, right through to Parramatta now.
Burramatta – The Place of Eels
Long before there was a Rose Hill, this was Burramattagal country. The Burramattagal were a clan of the Darug, and their name is usually given as coming from the Darug words for eel (burra), place (matta) and people (gal), so the people of the place of eels. The Dictionary of Sydney adds that the Bidjigal held the country to the north and west, and that the Burramattagal lived off a mix of food from the river and the woodlands around it.
The eels are still there. Saltwater from Port Jackson meets the freshwater of the Parramatta River here, and that's why the Parramatta Eels rugby league club picked the eel as its emblem. How far back people go here depends on who you read (see Where the Sources Disagree further down), but Greater Sydney Parklands says artefacts found in what is now Parramatta Park have been dated to between 35,000 and 39,000 years ago, and that sites that old are very rare.
The country the British found in 1788 looked like a gentleman's park, and that was no accident. Parramatta Park's own history notes that Phillip saw the Aboriginal people using controlled burning to manage the grasslands, and that the open, park-like look the British admired was the direct result of that care. Scarred trees in the park, where bark was taken for canoes, can still be seen, and shells from Aboriginal middens were burnt for lime in the mortar of Old Government House.
Maugoran, Boorong and Baludarri
When Phillip moved in in November 1788 the local clan was mostly one kinship group led by an elder named Maugoran. Maugoran, his son Baludarri and his young daughter Boorong were pushed off their land towards Wallumettagal country around today's Ryde. Maugoran complained about the number of white men settling on his country. Phillip's answer, as quoted in the Burramattagal article, was that "wherever our colonists fix themselves, the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country", and he sent more soldiers to Rose Hill.
Boorong went on to become an interpreter between the British and the local people and later the third wife of Bennelong. Baludarri spent time living at the Governor's house at Parramatta and guided Watkin Tench, but after he speared a convict in revenge for the wrecking of his canoe, Phillip outlawed him. He died of illness in 1791, and Bennelong organised his funeral in Sydney. The Baludarri Wetlands in Parramatta were named after him in 2008.
Disease did more damage than any musket. The smallpox epidemic of 1789 killed large numbers of people across the Cumberland Plain, and the St John's Cemetery heritage listing says that by 1830 there were no known survivors of the Burramattagal clan as a distinct group. Parramatta Park's history is more careful, saying survivors were possibly absorbed into neighbouring clans, and that some children were taken in by colonists.
Pemulwuy and the Battle of Parramatta, 1797
Resistance grew through the 1790s. In March 1797 the Bidjigal leader Pemulwuy led around 100 warriors into Parramatta. Settlers from the Northern Farms had been chasing a large group of Aboriginal people since dawn, and when Pemulwuy's party came towards the town the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps joined in. Pemulwuy threw a spear, the soldiers fired, and he was hit seven times. He was taken to the hospital at Parramatta and was expected to die, but he got better and escaped a few weeks later, still in leg irons. He was killed in 1802.
Parramatta Park's version puts the fighting at the military barracks in today's Robin Thomas Reserve, after a raid on the government farm at Toongabbie, and says at least five and possibly as many as fifty Aboriginal people were killed.
Rose Hill – The Second Settlement, 1788
Sydney Cove's soil was hopeless for growing grain, and the colony was close to starving. Phillip went looking for better land up the harbour, and Parramatta was the furthest point a boat could reach and the point where the river turned fresh. On 2 November 1788 he took a party of marines and a surveyor upriver and picked a defensible rise curved around a bend of the river, which he called the Crescent. The Dictionary of Sydney says the site for a redoubt was chosen on 2 November and convicts were sent up on 4 November. Land was cleared and the first crops went in.
He named the place Rose Hill after George Rose, Secretary to the Treasury, who was said to have helped him get the governorship. In June 1791 Phillip changed the name to Parramatta, after the name the Burramattagal used. Elizabeth Macarthur wrote at the time that it meant "head of the river", and the Dictionary of Sydney notes it was the first place the Europeans named from an Aboriginal word. The name Rose Hill lived on in the next suburb, now spelt Rosehill.
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A Town Planned From Scratch
In 1790 Phillip laid out a town. High Street, now George Street, ran a mile from the planned Government House down to the Landing Place on the river, and it was a massive 62 metres (205 feet) wide. Along both sides went wattle-and-daub huts with thatched roofs, each 12 by 24 feet, set 60 feet apart and meant for ten people. Convicts started building them in July 1790. Parramatta Park calls it Australia's first fully planned town.
A granary, stores and barracks went up, there was a hospital by 1789, and a new brick hospital by the river in 1792. A gaol was started in 1797, a strong log building 100 feet long according to the Parramatta Gaol heritage history. It burnt down in 1799 and was rebuilt by 1802. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first road to Sydney, Parramatta Road, was laid out around 1797 under Surveyor-General Augustus Alt. Before that, everything came and went by water.
James Ruse and Experiment Farm
James Ruse was a Cornishman, born at Launceston in 1759. In 1782 he was sentenced to death for breaking into a house and stealing two silver watches, reprieved, and given seven years' transportation. He came out on the Scarborough with the First Fleet with eighteen months of his sentence left, and told Phillip he'd been bred to farming.
Phillip gave him a go. In 1789 Ruse got one and a half acres of cleared land at Rose Hill, help to clear five more, two sows and six hens, and he was fed and clothed from the public store for fifteen months. The deal was simple: show that one man could support himself off the land. He did, and was granted another 30 acres. The National Trust calls it Australia's first convict land grant, and the farm took the name Experiment Farm.
Ruse sold up in October 1793 to the surgeon John Harris and moved out to the Hawkesbury, where flooding eventually wiped him out. He ended up as an overseer at Denham Court and died at Campbelltown in 1837. He carved parts of his own headstone, spelling and all.
Surgeon Harris and the Cottage
John Harris was one of those early colonists who seemed to do everything: surgeon to the New South Wales Corps, magistrate, head of police, naval officer, explorer, builder and one of the founding directors of the Bank of New South Wales. He'd served in Bengal, and the cottage on Experiment Farm is built like an Indian bungalow, with a verandah under the main roof and a raised platform, made for hot summers.
The Harris family kept the property until 1921, when it was cut up and became the suburb of Harris Park. The National Trust bought the cottage in 1961, after its Women's Committee raised £4,500, and it was the first property the Trust (NSW) ever acquired. It's at 9 Ruse Street, Harris Park.
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Parramatta Park and Old Government House
The Governors' Country House
Sydney's first Government House was cramped and unhealthy, and the town around it was rough, so the governors liked to get out to Parramatta. Phillip had a small cottage on the hill above the Crescent. A section of brick flooring from that house, laid in July 1790, survives and is on display.
In 1799 Governor John Hunter cleared away what was left of Phillip's cottage and built something more permanent on the same spot. The three rooms at the front of the main house are Hunter's. Under Lachlan Macquarie the house was enlarged from 1815 to a design by Lieutenant John Watts of the 46th Regiment, with the central portico credited to Francis Greenway. The rest of the main block and the two side pavilions date from Macquarie's work in 1818. Ten early governors used it between 1800 and 1847, and Sir Thomas Brisbane made it his main home for a while in the 1820s.
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One lovely detail is the black-and-white chequered floor in the entrance hall. There was no marble or granite to be had, so it's painted timber, and the original boards are still there. The house was dedicated in 1967, the National Trust runs it, and today it's furnished as it would have been in the early 1820s. In July 2010 Old Government House and its Domain were inscribed on the World Heritage List as one of the eleven Australian Convict Sites.
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From Governor's Domain to People's Park
The Domain around the house was a working farm as much as a garden: stockyards, a lumber yard, the redoubt, grazing paddocks and the government crops on the Crescent. Macquarie pushed the Domain east to O'Connell Street and, with Elizabeth Macquarie, reshaped it along the fashionable picturesque lines of the day. River Road dates from his time. Under Governor King, around 1800 to 1810, the botanist George Caley ran what may have been Australia's first public botanic garden on the government farm.
People were warned off the Domain from Macquarie's time until the 1840s, when Governor FitzRoy set aside land for a public racecourse and the Cumberland Turf Club was formed in 1847. The Parramatta Domain Act of 1857 ended the vice-regal use, and Parramatta Park was created in 1858 as a park for the people. A zoo ran in the park until 1951, when the animals went to Taronga, and for a time the US Army occupied the park.
Two memorials worth hunting out: the Boer War Memorial of 1904, which reused Doric columns from the old Parramatta courthouse on the corner of Church and George Streets, and the memorial to William Ewart Hart, who flew from Penrith and landed in the park in November 1911. The Dictionary of Sydney says it's recognised as the first long-distance flight in Australia.
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The Dairy Cottage
Tucked away in the park is one of the oldest buildings in the country. George Salter, a Devon man transported on the Second Fleet ship Neptune for smuggling, got a 30-acre grant from Governor Hunter and built a cottage on it in 1798. By 1800 he had ten acres of wheat and twenty of maize. Macquarie bought the farm for the government in 1813, paying for it with thirty heifers, and later turned the cottage into the Governor's dairy. A sunken milk room was dug on the south side around 1823.
One of the first dairymaids was Elizabeth Eccles, who'd come out as Elizabeth Bird on the First Fleet's Lady Penrhyn for stealing a lamb. She worked at the dairy until she died in 1835, and Governor Bourke paid for her funeral. When the Domain became a park in 1858 the cottage became the ranger's house. Parramatta Park describes it as the only other building left in the park from the early colony, apart from Old Government House.
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Brisbane's Observatory and the Bathhouse
Sir Thomas Brisbane was a keen astronomer, and in 1822 he built an observatory near Government House. It was the first permanent astronomical observatory in Australia, used to catalogue the southern stars. It closed in 1847, and all that's left are the stone piers of the transit telescope, a pair of marker pines and an 1880 memorial obelisk.
In 1823 he added a bathhouse on the same rise. Water was pumped up from the river and heated, then drained away to a duck pond. In 1886 the park trust turned it into the open, arched pavilion you see now, with its insides stripped out.
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St John's – The Church That Named Church Street
The Reverend Richard Johnson, chaplain of the First Fleet, held the first Christian service at Parramatta on 28 December 1788, and for a while he preached under a tree on the river bank near the present ferry wharf. A church foundation was laid in 1791, but before it was finished it was turned into a lock-up and then a granary. The Reverend Samuel Marsden arrived on 10 March 1794 to take charge of the western settlements, and in 1796 he opened a makeshift church made from two old convict huts on the corner of George and Marsden Streets.
The first St John's, of stuccoed brick, was opened in April 1803. It didn't age well. A sketch sent home in 1807, apparently by Governor Bligh, is labelled "Parramatta Church, built of brick and in a very bad state; unfinished in the inside – Stands in a Swamp."
The Twin Towers
Between 1817 and 1819 a new front with twin towers and spires was added at the western end. The towers are copied from St Mary's Church at Reculver in Kent. Elizabeth Macquarie showed Lieutenant John Watts a watercolour of Reculver and asked him to design towers for St John's, and his drawings are still in the State Library. In 1821 a clock by Thwaites and Reed of London went into the north tower, and it still has to be wound by hand. Macquarie's wife is usually given the credit for the idea, and Church Street itself takes its name from the church.
By 1852 the old church was described as a "perfect ruin". The builder James Houison was paid £1,350 to put up a new nave and chancel, and when the workmen dug out the old foundations they found a copper plate in Latin saying the foundation stone had been laid in 1799 under Governor Hunter. The towers were kept and the new church was built in front of them. It reopened on 1 July 1855. Transepts by Blacket and Sons were added in 1883. St John's became the provisional cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney in 1969.
St John's Cemetery – Australia's Oldest European Burial Ground
St John's Cemetery isn't next to the cathedral, which catches people out. It's a separate walled block on O'Connell Street. It was set up in 1790 on an old stock paddock as a general burial ground for every denomination, and it's the oldest surviving European cemetery in Australia. Only later in the 1800s, when each church got its own cemetery, did it become purely Anglican.
The first burial was a convict couple's child, James Magee, on 31 January 1790. On 28 January 1791 Phillip's servant and gardener Henry Edward Dodd was buried there with a headstone, and his is the oldest surviving grave in Australia with its headstone still in place. It was also the colony's first public funeral.
Who's Buried There
More than fifty First Fleeters are buried here or listed in the burial register, though most lie in unmarked graves. Among the better-known names are the Reverend Samuel Marsden and his wife Elizabeth, D'Arcy Wentworth and his family, members of the Blaxland family, the botanist Charles Fraser, the bridge builder David Lennox, George Barrington, the surveyor Augustus Alt, the surgeon John Harris, Elizabeth Bourke (wife of Governor Bourke), Lady Mary FitzRoy (wife of Governor FitzRoy) and William and Mary Batman, parents of John Batman.
The high wall around it is made of convict bricks and dates from the 1820s. The Friends of St John's Cemetery formed in 2016 to look after it, and the St John's Online project publishes biographies of the people buried there.
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Elizabeth Farm and the Macarthurs
John and Elizabeth Macarthur arrived with the Second Fleet in 1790. In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose granted John 100 acres by the river east of the town, and that same year they began a small brick house: four rooms, a hall, a cellar and a kitchen out the back. Grants and purchases pushed the estate to 925 acres by 1818.
From 1794 John began crossbreeding sheep there, which is where the Australian wool story starts. He was away in England for years at a time, including his long exile after the overthrow of Governor Bligh in 1808, and Elizabeth ran the farm and their other properties while he was gone. The two olive trees on the front lawn are thought to be the oldest surviving olives in Australia, from plants John brought out in 1805 or 1817.
Elizabeth lived at Elizabeth Farm until she died in 1850. The house was later leased out as a boarding house and even a glue factory. In 1904 William and Elizabeth Swann bought it with six acres, and the Swanns lived there until 1968. It passed to the Historic Houses Trust in 1983 and opened as a museum in 1984. The original cottage survives inside the later additions, making it Australia's oldest surviving European dwelling, and it was the very first place entered on the NSW State Heritage Register in 1999. Museums of History NSW runs it at 70 Alice Street, Rosehill.
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Hambledon Cottage
Hambledon Cottage was built between 1821 and 1824 on the north-western corner of the Macarthurs' original grant, to a simplified design by Henry Kitchen, a rival of Greenway's. It was long said to have been built for Penelope Lucas, the family governess, but the heritage listing now says it was more likely just extra room for Elizabeth Farm. Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott stayed there in 1825 and added a coach house and stables.
Penelope Lucas did move in, in 1827, and stayed until she died in 1836. John Macarthur had left her an annuity and the right to live there for life. Towards the end of his illness he banished the women from Elizabeth Farm, and his daughter Emmeline went to live with Miss Lucas at the cottage. Later the Macarthur family doctor, Matthew Anderson, who was also surgeon to the Female Factory and the Orphan School, lived there from 1839 to 1847. The cottage is at 47 Hassall Street, Harris Park, and is owned by the City of Parramatta.
The Female Factory
This one gets its own page, so just the outline here. The first Female Factory was a two-storey building above the gaol, on what is now Prince Alfred Square, and the women moved in in 1804. Within ten years more than 200 women and children were crammed into a place meant to sleep 30. Macquarie had Francis Greenway design a new factory for 250 women on the river at North Parramatta. He laid the first stone in 1818, and the women were moved in 1821. It cost £4,778.
Of the more than 9,000 women recorded passing through the female factories, an estimated 5,000 went through Parramatta. After the factory closed, its buildings became the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, now Cumberland Hospital.
The Orphan Schools
The Female Orphan School
Governor King had set up a Female Orphan School in Sydney in 1801 (I've written about it in my Orphan School post). Elizabeth Macquarie took a special interest in a new one at Parramatta. Macquarie laid the foundation stone in 1813 and the building at Rydalmere was finished in 1818. The Dictionary of Sydney gives the completion date as 30 June 1818. Today it's part of Western Sydney University, and the Whitlam Institute has been housed there since 2000.
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The Roman Catholic Orphan School
Catholic families had complained that Catholic children were being raised in the Protestant orphanages. A Roman Catholic Orphan School was set up at Waverley in 1836, and in 1841 a plain three-storey sandstone building went up beside the Female Factory's third-class penitentiary at Parramatta. It's the only surviving non-church building by colonial architect Henry Ginn. Many of the children's mothers were in the Female Factory next door, which is thought to be why the school was moved to Parramatta. In 1844, 113 orphans were transferred from Waverley.
The Sisters of the Good Shepherd took over the running of it in 1859. It was always overcrowded and underfunded, and it closed in 1886, with the children sent to St Vincent's Home at Manly. The site then became the Parramatta Girls Industrial School, better known as the Parramatta Girls Home, from 1887 to 1974.
Lancer Barracks
In 1817 Macquarie wrote to Earl Bathurst that the old barracks at Parramatta were "almost in ruins and consequently very dangerous", and that he planned a new one once the hospital was finished. Lancer Barracks went up between 1818 and 1820 on Smith Street, opposite where the station is now, and housed a run of British infantry regiments. When the British troops were withdrawn in the 1850s the police and government used it.
The Lancers took it over in the late 1800s, and the 1st/15th Royal New South Wales Lancers are still there. It's described as the longest continuously operating military site in Australia since colonial settlement. The Lancer Museum is in Linden House, open on Sundays.
The Native Institution and Macquarie's Feast
In 1814 William Shelley, a trader and former missionary, proposed a school to educate Aboriginal children, and Macquarie jumped at it. On 28 December 1814, the anniversary of his own arrival in Sydney, he held a public conference with the local Aboriginal people in the Parramatta marketplace to explain the school. The Sydney Gazette reported that fewer than sixty people came, because many feared their children would be taken by force. After an hour of talk three children were handed over, and everyone was seated in a circle and served roast beef and a jug of ale.
The Native Institution opened in a house near the church in January 1815. Parents were told they couldn't take their children back but could come and see them each year on 28 December. Four more children were taken during a punitive expedition in 1816, and Macquarie made the first land grant to Aboriginal people that year, 30 acres on Richmond Road to Colebee and Nurragingy. That settlement became known as the Black Town.
The December gathering became an annual event. At the 1816 feast the Gazette counted 179 men, women and children, with tables of roast beef, potatoes and bread and a cask of grog, and Macquarie handed out breastplates naming chiefs. In 1819 a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl, believed to be Maria Lock, won first prize in the colony's school examination ahead of around 120 others. But many parents never accepted the school. In 1818 Yarramundi spoke of the fear of "men in black clothes" taking the children, and after several children died in 1821 many ran away. In 1823 Brisbane moved the Institution to Black Town. The feast carried on after Macquarie left, with around 400 people at the 1824 gathering, until Governor Bourke stopped it in 1835.
Brislington – The Doctors' House
Brislington, at 10 George Street, is a two-storey red-brick Georgian house built between 1819 and 1821 for John Hodges, an emancipist trader and publican. It was probably the Anchor and Hope inn. The local story is that Hodges won £1,000 in a card game at the Woolpack with the eight of diamonds, and had the convict bricklayers work a diamond pattern into the back wall to celebrate. His luck ran out when he was convicted of stealing a big stone from the Government Quarry for his kitchen fireplace, and the house was advertised for forced sale in 1825.
In 1857 it was bought by Dr Walter Brown, who named it after his home town in Bristol. Three generations of Doctors Brown practised there until 1952. It became a nurses' home for Parramatta Hospital in 1949, survived a demolition plan in the 1970s, and since 1983 has been a medical and nursing museum.
Harrisford and the Old King's School
Harrisford, at 182 George Street down towards the river, was built between 1823 and 1829 for the Reverend William Walker when he married Rowland Hassall's daughter. In 1832 Walker leased it to the brand-new King's School, which opened there on 13 February 1832 under the Reverend Robert Forrest. Later it was William Woolls's school, then a home for John Harris's nephew, and later still a peanut butter factory, a stationery shop and a car workshop. The King's School Old Boys' Union owns it and restored it in 1980.
The school soon needed its own building. The Agricultural and Horticultural Society's old nursery on the north side of the river was handed over in 1834, Colonial Architect Ambrose Hallen drew up the plans, and the new sandstone school was ready to move into in January 1836. The King's School stayed on that site, beside the Domain, until August 1968, when it moved to its current campus in North Parramatta. The Old King's School buildings are now Bayanami Public School.
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Church Street, George Street and the Old Pubs
Early Parramatta ran along George Street, the old High Street, from Government House to the wharf. Visitors kept remarking on how many pubs there were. A visitor in 1837 complained that the town was "studded all over" with public houses. By 1817 there were twelve licences in Parramatta, including James Larra's Freemason's Arms, Andrew Nash's Hawkesbury Settler and Charles Walker's Red Cow.
The Woolpack
The Woolpack story starts with the Freemasons Arms, on the north-east corner of what are now Marsden and George Streets, kept by James Larra, a French ex-forger who became one of the colony's best-known publicans. In 1821 Larra sold to Andrew Nash, who renamed it the Woolpack after the wool trade that had started around Parramatta. It became the place for balls, banquets and honeymoons. The Woolpack and its predecessors stood on that block until 1895, when the land was sold to the Crown for a courthouse. The Woolpack name now belongs to the hotel on the south-east corner, which is roughly where Marsden's hut church had stood.
The Red Cow
The Red Cow on George Street was the Woolpack's great rival. It was named for the red cattle grazing around the town and was advertised as a landmark as early as 1803. The Agricultural Society of NSW was formally launched at a dinner there on 10 July 1822, with Governor Brisbane, Marsden and eighty "gentlemen of the first rank" at the table, and in 1827 it took the mail coach trade off the Hawkesbury Settler. Hannah Walker ran it for years after her husband died in 1826. It was sold to the Commercial Banking Company in 1873 and pulled down for the bank.
The Royal Oak
Up the north end of Church Street, on the corner of Ross Street, stood the Royal Oak. Gary Carter's history says a pub may have been there as early as 1813. In 1823 John Tunks, son of a First Fleet marine, was running the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle on the site, and George Sheffield renamed it the Royal Oak in 1853. Its stables took in racehorses when meetings were held in Parramatta Park. Last drinks were on 26 January 2020, and in May 2020 it was knocked down to make way for the light rail. The Cobb and Co stables at the back were kept, and the Royal Oak moved across the road to 404 Church Street.
Underneath the town there's more. The Parramatta Archaeological Site at 45 Macquarie Street preserves the cellar of the Shepherd and Flock Inn, licensed from 1825 to 1870, on an allotment where the Wheatsheaf Hotel ran in a convict hut from 1801 to 1809.
How Church Street Took Over
Church Street crosses the river on Lennox Bridge, built by David Lennox with convict labour between 1836 and 1839 from sandstone quarried at the Female Factory. It was the third crossing on the spot, after a timber footbridge washed away in 1795 and the Gaol Bridge of 1802 to 1804. Lennox Bridge is the third oldest masonry bridge still standing in NSW, and since 2024 it has carried the light rail.
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The Dictionary of Sydney says it was the railway reaching Parramatta in 1860 that swung business away from George Street and the wharf to Church Street and the station. Murray Brothers put up a multi-storey store in Church Street in 1889 that may have been the first in western Sydney. The Town Hall opened in 1883, and in 1888 the council put up the Centennial Memorial clock and fountain in the square out the front for the colony's centenary. Church Street was closed to through traffic for the mall in 1986.
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The River and the Ferries
For the first forty years the river was Parramatta's main road. The first wharf was built by convicts from gum logs and rebuilt in sandstone in 1835, near the Landing Place where Phillip's party came ashore in 1788. The first steam ferry, the Surprise, started running between Sydney and Parramatta on 2 June 1831, and paddle steamers carried goods and passengers up and down the river for decades.
Silt and pollution beat them in the end. Ferries also landed downstream at Redbank, near the mouth of Duck River, where from October 1883 a steam tramway ran passengers up George Street to the Park gates. Ferry services west of Meadowbank stopped in 1928, and the tramway closed on 31 March 1943. After dredging, and with the new RiverCat catamarans, the State Transit Authority brought the ferries back to Parramatta on 9 December 1993. At low tide the boats still stop at Rydalmere and you finish the trip by bus. The last RiverCat was retired on 9 March 2026, and the F3 now runs with the new River-class and Parramatta River-class ferries.
The 1855 Railway
Sydney's first railway opened on 26 September 1855, running from Sydney to a station called Parramatta Junction, which is in what we now call Granville. So the first "Parramatta" station wasn't in Parramatta at all. The line was pushed through to the present Parramatta station on 4 July 1860. When it was carried on west towards Penrith, it cut through the south-west corner of the Domain, and Macquarie's stables and coach house were pulled down to make way for it.
The station has been rebuilt more than once. A new transport interchange linked to Westfield opened on 19 February 2006, and a Parramatta metro station a block to the north is planned to open in 2032.
The Roxy
The Roxy at 65–69 George Street was the first of a planned chain of suburban picture palaces by Roxy Theatres Ltd. It was designed by Moore and Dyer with Herbert and Wilson in full Spanish Mission style, and it opened on 6 February 1930 to a packed house of 1,923 seats and a crowd of thousands in the street. It was built for the talkies and also had a Christie theatre organ, said to be one of the biggest and best in the state.
It's been through a lot since. The organ was sold in the 1950s, and in 1976 Hoyts cut it into three cinemas, with Gough Whitlam at the reopening. Village took it over, and it closed as a cinema in March 2002 after 72 years. It reopened as a nightclub and bar in 2004 and closed in July 2014. Plans in 2017–18 for a tower on the site were knocked back by Parramatta Council and the Land and Environment Court. It's on the State Heritage Register, and the heritage listing calls it the best surviving example in Australia of the Spanish Mission style on a large public building.
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Parramatta Today
Parramatta was gazetted a city on 19 November 1976. Since 2000 it has turned into a government and office centre, with the NSW Police headquarters, Sydney Water and thousands of office workers moving out from the Sydney CBD, and Parramatta Square has gone up around the Town Hall.
The Light Rail
The first stage of the Parramatta Light Rail opened on 20 December 2024. It's a 12-kilometre line from Westmead to Carlingford through the Parramatta CBD, run as the L4. From Rosehill Gardens towards Carlingford it reuses the old Carlingford railway line. It runs on-street down Church Street and over Lennox Bridge. The second stage, a branch towards Wentworth Point and Sydney Olympic Park, started construction in late 2024. In a way it brings back what was lost when the old steam trams were pulled up in 1943.
Powerhouse Parramatta
Powerhouse Parramatta is due to open on 7 November 2026 on the river bank. It's designed by Moreau Kusunoki with Genton, cost $915 million, and will be the largest museum in NSW, with most exhibitions free. The ground floor is raised above a 1-in-1000-year flood. The site was Willow Grove, Annie Gallagher's 1890s villa, which was taken down after a long fight with green bans. The plan to rebuild it somewhere else was dropped in 2023. I've told that whole story on my Willow Grove page.
It's a long way from a redoubt on the Crescent and a row of convict huts down High Street. But Old Government House, St John's towers, Elizabeth Farm, Experiment Farm, the Dairy Cottage and the graves on O'Connell Street are all still there, and you can see the lot in a day on foot.
Where the Sources Disagree
- How old is Aboriginal Parramatta? Wikipedia's Parramatta article says radiocarbon dating points to human activity from around 30,000 years ago. Greater Sydney Parklands says artefacts in Parramatta Park have been dated to between 35,000 and 39,000 years ago. Wikipedia's Burramattagal article says the Eora and Darug clans have been in the Sydney basin for "up to 10,000 years", which is far lower than the dated finds.
- The day Rose Hill became Parramatta. Wikipedia's Parramatta article gives 4 June 1791. The Dictionary of Sydney (Terry Kass) and the St John's Cemetery heritage history give 2 June 1791, the cemetery history linking it to King George III's birthday.
- When Phillip first saw the place. Parramatta Park's history says an expedition "came upon Parramatta in April" 1788. The St John's Cathedral history puts Phillip's trip to the head of the harbour in October 1788. Both agree the settlement began in November 1788.
- The Battle of Parramatta, 1797. Wikipedia's Parramatta article says Pemulwuy "held the town" until he was shot. Wikipedia's Battle of Parramatta article says five warriors were killed outright and others died later. Parramatta Park says at least five and possibly as many as fifty were killed, and that the attack was on the barracks after a raid on Toongabbie.
- Ruse's grant. The Dictionary of Sydney says Ruse was occupying Experiment Farm by November 1789 and was granted it later. The National Trust says the first land grant was made in 1790 after he asked for land in 1789. Wikipedia's James Ruse article says he got the further 30 acres in March 1791, two months after declaring himself self-sufficient in February.
- How old is the Experiment Farm Cottage? Wikipedia's Experiment Farm Cottage article dates it to c.1834 in its opening, but elsewhere in the same article says Harris built it in the mid-1790s. The National Trust calls it "the c1835 bungalow".
- Which is the oldest building in Parramatta? Wikipedia's Parramatta article calls Brislington "the oldest colonial building in Parramatta", dating it to 1821. That can't be right on its own figures, since Old Government House (front rooms 1799), Elizabeth Farm (1793) and the Dairy Cottage (1798) are all older. Brislington's own heritage history dates it 1819–21.
- The Dairy Cottage's date. Wikipedia's Dairy Cottage article says Salter built it in 1798. Parramatta Park says it was "constructed between 1798 and 1821", in part by Salter, which takes in the later dairy work.
- When the first St John's opened. Wikipedia's St John's Cathedral article says 10 April 1803. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first service was held on 17 April 1803. The cathedral article also notes that Hunter reported laying the foundation in 1798, that a later claim gave 5 April 1797, and that the copper plate found in 1852 said 1799.
- When the towers went up. Wikipedia's St John's Cathedral article says 1817 to 1819, with Macquarie laying a foundation stone on 23 December 1818. The Dictionary of Sydney just says "the 1810s". My own 2022 St John's post says 1816 to 1820.
- The 1883 transepts. Wikipedia credits Blacket and Sons, with Cyril Blacket finishing the design, and gives 1883. My 2022 St John's post says 1882 and names Edmund Blacket.
- The Native Institution's start. Wikipedia's Blacktown Native Institution article says the school opened on 18 January 1815. The Dictionary of Sydney says the Parramatta Institution ran "from January 1814" to December 1820, and Wikipedia's Parramatta article says Macquarie opened the school in 1814. Since the planning conference was held in December 1814, 1815 looks right for the opening.
- Maria Lock or Maria Cook? The Dictionary of Sydney names the prize-winning pupil Maria Lock. Wikipedia's Blacktown Native Institution article calls her Maria Cook.
- How many children at the first feast? The 1814 Sydney Gazette report says three children were handed over on the day and one more soon after. The Dictionary of Sydney says four students were enrolled from the conference.
- When the Lancers arrived. The opening of Wikipedia's Lancer Barracks article says the Lancers have been there since 1885. The history section of the same article says they moved in in 1891.
- How the King's School started. Wikipedia's King's School article says it was founded in 1831 and opened on 13 February 1832 "with a handful of pupils". The Harrisford article says about a dozen boys. The Old King's School heritage history says three day boys. The Dictionary of Sydney says the school moved north of the river in 1835. The heritage history says the building was ready in January 1836, and the Harrisford article says the school left Harrisford in 1836.
- The Woolpack's beginnings. The Woolpack Hotel's own history says it was one of the first ten hotels licensed "by Governor Phillip, in May, 1796". Phillip left the colony on 11 December 1792 (Wikipedia, Arthur Phillip), so that can't be right as written. Hunter was governor in 1796. The same history goes on to describe the Freemasons Arms in 1798, renamed the Woolpack in 1821. The St John's Cathedral history says the Woolpack and its predecessors stood on the corner from 1796 to 1895.
- The Royal Oak's age. The ABC and the City of Parramatta say the Royal Oak dated from 1813. Gary Carter's history says it "may have been established as early as 1813", but the first publican he can document on the site is John Tunks at the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle in 1823.
- Murray Brothers. The Dictionary of Sydney says Murray Brothers built multi-storey premises in Church Street in 1889 that may have been western Sydney's first multi-storey store. Wikipedia's Centenary Square article says Murray Brothers built the town's first department store in 1926.
- Hart's flight. The Dictionary of Sydney says William Hart flew from Penrith to Parramatta on 3 November 1911 in 19 minutes. Wikipedia's Old Government House article says he landed in the park on 4 November and the flight took 23 minutes.
- The first gaol. The Dictionary of Sydney says a gaol was begun in 1797. Wikipedia's Parramatta Gaol article says the first gaol was established in 1798, burnt in 1799 and was rebuilt in 1802.
- The Orphan School's move. Wikipedia's Roman Catholic Orphan School article dates the Parramatta school from 1841, when the building was finished. The Female Factory precinct history says the orphans were moved from Waverley to Parramatta in 1844.
Timeline
- 35,000–39,000 years ago: Dates given for Aboriginal artefacts found in Parramatta Park (Greater Sydney Parklands).
- 2 November 1788: Phillip chooses the Crescent for a redoubt and farm. Convicts arrive on 4 November.
- 28 December 1788: Rev. Richard Johnson holds the first Christian service at Parramatta.
- 1789: Smallpox devastates the Aboriginal people of the Cumberland Plain. James Ruse starts farming at Experiment Farm.
- 31 January 1790: First burial in what becomes St John's Cemetery.
- July 1790: High Street (George Street) and its convict huts laid out. The brick floor of Phillip's house is laid.
- June 1791: Rose Hill renamed Parramatta (2 or 4 June).
- 1793: Ruse sells Experiment Farm to John Harris. Macarthurs begin Elizabeth Farm.
- 10 March 1794: Rev. Samuel Marsden arrives.
- 1796: Marsden's hut church opens at George and Marsden Streets.
- March 1797: Battle of Parramatta. Pemulwuy wounded.
- 1798: George Salter builds the Dairy Cottage. The first log gaol is in use (burnt 1799).
- 1799: Governor Hunter builds the new Government House.
- April 1803: First St John's Church opens.
- 1804: First Female Factory opens above the gaol.
- 28 December 1814: Macquarie's first Aboriginal conference and feast in the marketplace.
- January 1815: Native Institution opens. It moves to Black Town in 1823.
- 1815–1818: Macquarie enlarges Government House.
- 1817–1819: St John's twin towers built.
- 1818: Female Orphan School finished. Female Factory foundation stone laid.
- 1818–1820: Lancer Barracks built.
- 1819–1821: Brislington built.
- 1821: Female Factory occupied. Larra's inn becomes the Woolpack.
- 1821–1824: Hambledon Cottage built.
- 1822–1823: Brisbane's observatory and bathhouse.
- 1823–1829: Harrisford built.
- 2 June 1831: First steam ferry, the Surprise.
- 13 February 1832: The King's School opens at Harrisford.
- 1836–1839: Lennox Bridge built.
- 1841: Roman Catholic Orphan School built beside the Female Factory.
- 1847: Observatory closes. The governors stop using Government House (used 1800 to 1847).
- 1850: Elizabeth Macarthur dies at Elizabeth Farm.
- 1852–1855: St John's rebuilt behind the towers.
- 26 September 1855: Railway opens to Parramatta Junction (Granville).
- 1858: Parramatta Park opens to the public.
- 4 July 1860: Railway extended to the present Parramatta station.
- 1883: Town Hall completed. Redbank steam tramway opens.
- 1886: Roman Catholic Orphan School closes. Bathhouse becomes a pavilion.
- 1888: Centennial Memorial fountain erected.
- 1904: Boer War Memorial unveiled. Swanns buy Elizabeth Farm.
- 1911: William Hart lands in Parramatta Park.
- 1928: Ferries stop running west of Meadowbank.
- 6 February 1930: The Roxy opens.
- 1943: Redbank tramway closes.
- 1961: National Trust buys Experiment Farm Cottage.
- 1967: Old Government House dedicated to the National Trust.
- 1968: The King's School leaves for North Parramatta.
- 19 November 1976: Parramatta gazetted a city.
- 1984: Elizabeth Farm opens as a museum.
- 9 December 1993: RiverCat ferries return to Parramatta.
- July 2010: Old Government House and Domain World Heritage listed.
- May 2020: Royal Oak Hotel demolished for the light rail.
- 20 December 2024: Parramatta Light Rail opens.
- 9 March 2026: Last RiverCat retired.
- 7 November 2026: Powerhouse Parramatta due to open.
My Earlier Posts
- Old Government House – Parramatta – New South Wales
- Old Parramatta Government House Precinct – Parramatta
- St John's Anglican Church – Parramatta
- Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta
- Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
- Willow Grove – 34 Phillip Street – Parramatta
- “Hiawatha” – 70 George Street – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
- The Cedars – St John's – Parramatta
- The Cedars – St John's – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
- Courthouse and Scotch Church – Parramatta
- The Orphan School – George St (the Female Orphan School before its move to Parramatta)
- Parramatta Female Factory – Fleet Street, North Parramatta – Greenway's Factory, the Convict Women, the Asylum and the Girls Home – 1804 to Today
- The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
- Pemulwuy – Bidjigal Resistance Leader of Botany Bay and Parramatta
- Parklands – Castle Hill
- Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales
- The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808 – Governor William Bligh Is Overthrown
- The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse
- Woolaware Bennelong
Sources
- Kass, Terry, "Parramatta", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta
- "Parramatta and Black Town Native Institutions", Dictionary of Sydney. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_and_black_town_native_institutions
- "Aboriginal Feast Day 28 December 1816" (Sydney Gazette transcription and context), Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, Macquarie University. https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/lema/1816/congress28dec1816.html
- "First Aboriginal Feast Day at Parramatta 28 December 1814" (Sydney Gazette, 31 December 1814), Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, Macquarie University. https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/lema/1814/sydgaz31dec1814.html
- Greater Sydney Parklands, "Ancient Aboriginal heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/ancient-aboriginal-heritage
- Greater Sydney Parklands, "Aboriginal people since 1788" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/aboriginal-people-1788
- Greater Sydney Parklands, "Convict and colonial history" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/convict-and-colonial-history
- Greater Sydney Parklands, "Park heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/park-heritage
- Greater Sydney Parklands, "World heritage listing" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/world-heritage-listing
- National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Old Government House". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/old-government-house/
- National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/experiment-farm-cottage/
- Woolpack Hotel, "History" (extracts from Collinridge Rivett, The Fabulous "Woolpack" Story, 1956). https://www.woolpackhotel.com.au/history
- City of Parramatta, Parramatta History and Heritage, "The 'Red Cow' Inn Parramatta", 2013. https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/blog/2013/08/21/the-red-cow-inn-parramatta
- City of Parramatta, Parramatta History and Heritage, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/research-topics/parramatta/parramatta-light-rail
- Carter, Gary J., "The Royal Oak Parramatta", from About that Shout, 2017 (NSW Major Projects exhibition document). https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=EXH-82%2120190223T045541.048+GMT
- ABC News, "Parramatta's Royal Oaks Hotel demolished for light rail", 20 May 2020. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-20/sydney-morning-briefing-wednesday-may-20/12263888
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Arthur Phillip". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Phillip
- Wikipedia, "Burramattagal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burramattagal
- Wikipedia, "Battle of Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Old Government House, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Government_House,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Dairy Cottage, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Cottage,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "St John's Cathedral, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cathedral,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "St John's Cemetery, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cemetery,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "James Ruse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ruse
- Wikipedia, "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment_Farm_Cottage
- Wikipedia, "Elizabeth Farm". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Farm
- Wikipedia, "Hambledon Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambledon_Cottage
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory_and_Institutions_Precinct
- Wikipedia, "Rydalmere Hospital". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydalmere_Hospital
- Wikipedia, "Roman Catholic Orphan School". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Orphan_School
- Wikipedia, "Lancer Barracks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer_Barracks
- Wikipedia, "Blacktown Native Institution Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacktown_Native_Institution_Site
- Wikipedia, "Brislington, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brislington,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Harrisford". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisford
- Wikipedia, "The King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_School,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Old King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_King's_School,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta Gaol". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Gaol
- Wikipedia, "Prince Alfred Square". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Alfred_Square
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta Archaeological Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Archaeological_Site
- Wikipedia, "Lennox Bridge, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennox_Bridge,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Centenary Square, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenary_Square,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta ferry wharf". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_ferry_wharf
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta River ferry service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_River_ferry_service
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta railway station". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_railway_station
- Wikipedia, "Roxy Theatre, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxy_Theatre,_Parramatta
- Wikipedia, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Light_Rail
- Wikipedia, "Powerhouse Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerhouse_Parramatta
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