Parramatta – From Burramatta and Rose Hill to the River City – Old Government House, St John's, Elizabeth Farm and Australia's Second Settlement – 1788 to Today

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.

Parramatta in 1811, looking across the young town. The Dictionary of Sydney uses a south-west view of Parramatta from the same year by an unknown artist. Unknown artist, 1811, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

A stone marker in Parramatta Park on the site of Governor Phillip's house. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Government House at Parramatta in 1805, by the surveyor George William Evans, looking along the old High Street. George William Evans, 1805, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Experiment Farm Cottage, Harris Park, with the caretaker's cottage behind. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Old Government House, Parramatta, the oldest surviving public building in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

One of the furnished rooms inside Old Government House. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Members of the Royal Australian Historical Society visiting Government House on their 1903 excursion to Parramatta. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The 1904 Boer War Memorial in Parramatta Park, built with columns from the old courthouse. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The William Ewart Hart memorial, marking where he landed after his 1911 flight from Penrith. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The Governor's dairy at Parramatta, drawn in 1844. Unknown artist, 1844, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dairy Cottage today, with the later ranger's cottage on the right. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The remains of Governor Brisbane's observatory, the first in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Governor Brisbane's bathhouse of 1823, turned into an open pavilion in 1886. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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 Reverend Samuel Marsden, engraved by James Fittler around 1809. James Fittler, engraving c.1809, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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 Church, Parramatta, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst in the early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St John's Cathedral in 2023, with Macquarie's twin towers still out the front. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

St John's Cemetery on O'Connell Street, the oldest surviving European cemetery in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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 Macarthur, who ran the Macarthur estates while John was away. Unidentified painter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Joseph Lycett's view of the "Residence of John Macarthur Esq. near Parramatta", about 1823. Joseph Lycett, c.1823, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elizabeth Farm today, Alice Street, Rosehill. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Hambledon Cottage, Hassall Street, Harris Park. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Augustus Earle's watercolour of the Female Factory at Parramatta, about 1826. Augustus Earle, c.1826, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Joseph Lycett's "View of the Female Orphan School, near Parramatta", about 1825. Joseph Lycett, c.1825, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

A visit to the Girls' Institution at Parramatta in March 1939, on the old Orphan School site. Photo by Sam Hood. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Lancer Barracks, Smith Street, from a slide taken around 1985. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Brislington, 10 George Street, now a medical and nursing museum. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Harrisford, 182 George Street, the first home of The King's School. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

One of the Old King's School buildings beside Parramatta Park. sv1ambo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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 Woolpack Hotel on the corner of George and Marsden Streets. rcbutcher, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The Royal Oak Hotel at Church and Ross Streets in 2013, seven years before it was demolished for the light rail. rcbutcher, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Lennox Bridge, completed in 1839, carrying Church Street over the Parramatta River. sv1ambo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The 1888 Centennial Memorial Fountain in Centenary Square, between the Town Hall and St John's. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Parramatta from May's Hill, painted by Joseph Lycett around 1824. Joseph Lycett, c.1824, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Redbank Wharf in 1915, the ferry terminus for Parramatta, where trams took passengers into town. Unknown photographer, 1915, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The RiverCat Marjorie Jackson at Parramatta Wharf in May 2025. State Transport Regions, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Parramatta station in December 2024. JustARandomEditor123, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

The Roxy, George Street, in the 1930s. Photo by Sam Hood. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hoyts Roxy in June 1993. lindsaybridge, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Church Street in January 2025, just after the light rail opened. Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

1. Kass, Terry, "Parramatta", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta
2. "Parramatta and Black Town Native Institutions", Dictionary of Sydney. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_and_black_town_native_institutions
3. "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
4. "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
5. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Ancient Aboriginal heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/ancient-aboriginal-heritage
6. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Aboriginal people since 1788" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/aboriginal-people-1788
7. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Convict and colonial history" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/convict-and-colonial-history
8. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Park heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/park-heritage
9. Greater Sydney Parklands, "World heritage listing" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/world-heritage-listing
10. National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Old Government House". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/old-government-house/
11. National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/experiment-farm-cottage/
12. Woolpack Hotel, "History" (extracts from Collinridge Rivett, The Fabulous "Woolpack" Story, 1956). https://www.woolpackhotel.com.au/history
13. 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
14. City of Parramatta, Parramatta History and Heritage, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/research-topics/parramatta/parramatta-light-rail
15. 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
16. 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
17. Wikipedia, "Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta
18. Wikipedia, "Arthur Phillip". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Phillip
19. Wikipedia, "Burramattagal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burramattagal
20. Wikipedia, "Battle of Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Parramatta
21. Wikipedia, "Old Government House, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Government_House,_Parramatta
22. Wikipedia, "Dairy Cottage, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Cottage,_Parramatta
23. Wikipedia, "St John's Cathedral, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cathedral,_Parramatta
24. Wikipedia, "St John's Cemetery, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cemetery,_Parramatta
25. Wikipedia, "James Ruse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ruse
26. Wikipedia, "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment_Farm_Cottage
27. Wikipedia, "Elizabeth Farm". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Farm
28. Wikipedia, "Hambledon Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambledon_Cottage
29. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory
30. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory_and_Institutions_Precinct
31. Wikipedia, "Rydalmere Hospital". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydalmere_Hospital
32. Wikipedia, "Roman Catholic Orphan School". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Orphan_School
33. Wikipedia, "Lancer Barracks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer_Barracks
34. Wikipedia, "Blacktown Native Institution Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacktown_Native_Institution_Site
35. Wikipedia, "Brislington, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brislington,_Parramatta
36. Wikipedia, "Harrisford". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisford
37. Wikipedia, "The King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_School,_Parramatta
38. Wikipedia, "Old King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_King's_School,_Parramatta
39. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Gaol". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Gaol
40. Wikipedia, "Prince Alfred Square". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Alfred_Square
41. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Archaeological Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Archaeological_Site
42. Wikipedia, "Lennox Bridge, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennox_Bridge,_Parramatta
43. Wikipedia, "Centenary Square, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenary_Square,_Parramatta
44. Wikipedia, "Parramatta ferry wharf". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_ferry_wharf
45. Wikipedia, "Parramatta River ferry service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_River_ferry_service
46. Wikipedia, "Parramatta railway station". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_railway_station
47. Wikipedia, "Roxy Theatre, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxy_Theatre,_Parramatta
48. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Light_Rail
49. Wikipedia, "Powerhouse Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerhouse_Parramatta

Pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, with the photographer or artist and licence shown under each one. Click a picture to see its Commons page.

Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales – Norfolk Island, the Rum Trade and the Sydney Gazette – 1758 to 1808

Philip Gidley King, in a portrait the State Library of NSW dates to about 1798. Unknown artist, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Philip Gidley King is the governor most Sydneysiders only know from a street sign. King Street runs right through the city, and the man it's named after was there from the very start. He came out with the First Fleet as Arthur Phillip's hand-picked lieutenant, planted the settlement on Norfolk Island a few weeks after Sydney Cove, ran that island for most of the 1790s, then came back as the third Governor of New South Wales from 1800 to 1806. In those six years he took on the rum traders, shipped John Macarthur home, put down the Castle Hill rising, let George Howe start the Sydney Gazette, sent settlers off to the Derwent and Port Dalrymple and re-opened Newcastle. The officers of the New South Wales Corps wore him down in the end, and he died in England in 1808, aged just fifty. His family stayed on, though, and the Kings and their in-laws became one of the colony's big names.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography sums him up as a man whose reputation "stands today lower than is deserved". Here's his story, from Cornwall to Parramatta and back.

A Draper's Son from Launceston

King was born at Launceston in Cornwall on 23 April 1758. His father, Philip, was a draper, and his mother's father, Gidley, was a local attorney (Wikipedia names him John Gidley of Exeter). The ADB points out that the family weren't poor, but they weren't gentry either, and later on some of his enemies in Sydney sneered that he was "not a gentleman". The navy was a way up for a boy like that.

He went to sea at twelve, as a captain's servant in HMS Swallow, on 22 December 1770. Five years in the East Indies followed, then American waters when the War of Independence broke out in 1775. He became a midshipman in the Liverpool that July and was made lieutenant in the Renown on 25 December 1778. One of the officers who examined him told his mother he was "one of the most Promising young men I have ever met".

The meeting that shaped the rest of his life came in the Channel Fleet. From 1780 he served in the Ariadne under Captain Arthur Phillip, and in 1783 he sailed to India with Phillip in the Europe. Phillip, the ADB says, "formed a high opinion of his merits".

The First Fleet and HMS Sirius

So when Phillip was given command of the Botany Bay expedition, he picked King straight away. In October 1786 King was named second lieutenant of HMS Sirius, the flagship Phillip was sailing in himself. When Phillip shifted into the faster Supply to race ahead of the main fleet, he took King with him.

An anchor from HMS Sirius, King's ship on the First Fleet, on display in Sydney. Photo by sv1ambo, 2012, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A fortnight after the fleet arrived, Phillip chose him, "as a officer of merit … whose perseverance may be depended upon", to set up a second settlement on Norfolk Island out in the Pacific.

Norfolk Island, 1788 to 1790

King sailed from Port Jackson on 14 February 1788 with a party of twenty-three, fifteen of them convicts. Getting ashore was the first problem. The island has no proper harbour, and it took until 6 March to land. Then came the work of clearing the pines, building huts and fighting off grubs, rats, salt winds and hurricanes. Wikipedia adds that early in 1789 King stopped a planned mutiny, in which some convicts meant to seize him and the other officers and escape on the next ship to call.

For all that, his reports were upbeat. There was plenty of fish, the stock did well and the soil was good, and he told Phillip the island could support "at least one hundred families". Phillip was impressed enough to keep pushing for his promotion. London's answer, in December 1789, was to make King lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island at £250 a year.

Kingston on Norfolk Island today, looking down from Flagstaff Hill. Photo by Inas, 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ann Inett, Norfolk and Sydney

One of the women in that first small party was Ann Inett, a convict from Worcestershire. She and King had two sons. The first, born on 8 January 1789, was named Norfolk, after the island. The second, born in 1790, was named Sydney. The ADB says both boys "were well cared for" by their father, and both became lieutenants in the navy. Wikipedia says Norfolk King was the first Australian-born officer in the Royal Navy and went on to command the schooner Ballahoo.

King didn't marry Ann. When he left for England in 1790 she stayed in Sydney with the boys. Wikipedia says she married another man in 1792, a match King had probably arranged, and went on to lead "a comfortable and respected life in the colony". King arranged for the two boys to be educated in England.

A Flying Trip to London and a Wife

In March 1790, the month Sirius was wrecked on Norfolk Island, Phillip sent King to England to tell the government how bad things were in the settlements. He reached London just before Christmas, saw Lord Grenville and Sir Joseph Banks, and was promoted commander on 2 March 1791.

Nine days later, on 11 March 1791, he married Anna Josepha Coombe at St Martin-in-the-Fields. She was his first cousin, born at Hatherleigh in Devon in 1765, and she was twenty-six to his thirty-three. Four days after the wedding they sailed in HMS Gorgon for the Pacific. Young William Chapman, King's protégé, came along too.

Anna Josepha King (née Coombe), King's wife and first cousin, in an early-1800s portrait. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On the way out King did something typical of him. Hearing at the Cape that the colony was still short of food, he bought livestock there on his own say-so. Many of the animals died before reaching Sydney, and the Treasury dragged out the argument over who'd pay for them for years.

Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, 1791 to 1796

King was back on the island early in November 1791, and about six weeks later Anna Josepha gave birth to their son, Phillip Parker King, named after King's old captain. Their house, according to Marnie Bassett's biography of Mrs King (quoted on Wikipedia), was a "dilapidated little building twenty four feet by twelve, falling to pieces and unsafe to live in". Two daughters followed on the island: Anna Maria in 1793 and Utricia in 1795. Utricia died as a small child.

The island he came back to was a different place. Under Lieutenant-Governor Robert Ross the population had grown to nearly a thousand, and King found "discord and strife on every person's countenance". He issued new regulations in 1792, listened to the settlers (ex-marines and ex-convicts) on wages and prices, and by 1794 the island grew all its own grain and was sending surplus pigs to Sydney.

The old gaol at Kingston, photographed in 1898. These stone buildings come from the island's later convict days, long after King's time. Powerhouse Museum collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Maori Flax Men

London's great hope for Norfolk Island was flax, for sails and rope for the navy. Nobody on the island knew how to work the native plant, so while in England King talked the government into ordering Captain George Vancouver to bring flax-dressers from New Zealand. Two Maori men were duly kidnapped and brought to the island. The trouble was, as the ADB puts it, "they knew nothing about flax-dressing". All King could do was take them home.

He did it himself, making a ten-day visit to New Zealand in November 1793. For that he was reprimanded by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose and the Duke of Portland for leaving his post without permission, a reproof the ADB calls "unmerited". The same year he proposed a British settlement at the Bay of Islands.

Trouble with the Corps

This was also where King first locked horns with the New South Wales Corps. Some soldiers on the island claimed he punished them too hard and the ex-convicts too lightly. After a run-in with Mrs King's servants and a drunken soldier's insolence to King himself, things turned mutinous. King, backed by most of the Corps officers there, sent twenty of the men to Sydney for court martial. Grose, back in Sydney, censured King and gave the military illegal authority over the island's civilians. King obeyed while noting it was improper. Portland later overruled Grose, and Grose apologised, but it was a sign of things to come.

So was King's health. He had gout and chest trouble, and by December 1795 there was "much doubt" he'd recover. Governor John Hunter gave him leave, and in October 1796 he left Norfolk Island for England.

Waiting in England, 1796 to 1799

King needed a job. He told Banks his total worldly goods were little more than £1,500, and that he had "neither kept a shop or sold drams", which was a dig at the officers back in Sydney. With Phillip and Banks behind him, in 1798 he got a dormant commission to take over from Hunter if Hunter died or left the colony. He was made post-captain on 5 December 1798.

Getting there was another matter. He was meant to sail in a new ship built partly to Banks's design, with a "plant cabbin". She was hopeless, the ADB says, "utterly cranky", and when she finally sailed in August 1799 she turned back to Portsmouth at the first rough weather and was condemned. King finally left in the Speedy in November 1799 (the ADB gives 26 November; Mrs King's journal on the State Library list starts on 19 November), carrying the despatch that recalled Hunter.

Philip Gidley and Anna Josepha King with their children Elizabeth, Anna Maria and Phillip Parker, painted by Robert Dighton in 1799, the year they left for Sydney. Robert Dighton, 1799, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Only little Elizabeth came with them. Phillip Parker and Anna Maria were left at school in England. Anna Josepha kept a diary of the five-month voyage, full of storms and gales.

A page from Anna Josepha King's diary of the voyage out in the Speedy, 1799–1800. Anna Josepha King, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Third Governor of New South Wales, 1800 to 1806

The Kings reached Port Jackson in April 1800. Hunter was in no hurry to go, and the two old shipmates fell out badly. The ADB describes an "unseemly impatience" on King's side, in letters each man thought insulting. King finally took command on 28 September 1800. He'd already written that "nothing less than a total change in the system of administration" would do. He only became governor in full title in 1802; until then he was technically lieutenant-governor. He sent Major Joseph Foveaux to run Norfolk Island in his place.

Anna Josepha became the first governor's wife to live in the colony, since Phillip had left his wife in England and Hunter was unmarried.

Taking on the Rum Trade

King's first target was the officers' grip on trade, especially spirits. He came armed with a stack of orders and issued new port and price regulations the moment he took over. He still had to let surgeons William Balmain and D'Arcy Wentworth sell 4,359 gallons of spirits they had on hand, but he cut spirit imports to about a third of the rate in Hunter's last months. He asked Calcutta and the British consuls in America to stop sending liquor, and he started building a brewery so people would have something else to drink. It didn't produce until 1804. According to the ADB, he got spirit drinking down to about two and a half bottles a month per adult man between 1801 and 1804, but illegal stills kept popping up.

He also opened a public warehouse that sold goods at only 50 per cent over cost, and tried to fix prices, wages, hours, interest rates, weights and measures and the value of the jumble of coins in use. He cut the officers' servants on the government ration from 356 to 94. By 1806 only 56 out of 646 farmers were living off the government store, compared with 110 out of 401 in 1800.

Macarthur, the Duel and the Voyage Home

That kind of thing made enemies, and the sharpest was Captain John Macarthur of the Corps. In 1801 Macarthur fought a duel with his own commanding officer, Colonel William Paterson, after a quarrel that had begun with the governor. In November 1801 King did what Hunter had done before him and sent Macarthur to England to face a court martial.

John Macarthur, King's fiercest enemy in the Corps. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Colonel William Paterson, commander of the NSW Corps, who fought the 1801 duel with Macarthur. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It didn't go to plan. Macarthur was never court-martialled. He resigned his commission and came back in July 1805 "in triumph", the ADB says, with an order for 5,000 acres of the best land in the colony to breed sheep.

The bad blood kept coming. Early in 1803, right after King refused to let a cargo of spirits land from the Atlas, libellous verses called "pipes" mocking him and his officials went around the town. The courts martial that followed only showed how deep the hatred ran. In May 1803 King asked for leave while the colony was investigated. London read it as a resignation and accepted it.

The Castle Hill Rising, 1804

King was nervous of the Irish prisoners, many of them sent out after the 1798 rebellion. On the night of 4 March 1804 the convicts at the Castle Hill government farm rose, and next day Major George Johnston's troops broke them at what came to be called Vinegar Hill, near Rouse Hill. King declared martial law. The ADB says he was "rather over-excited" at the time but felt safer afterwards, splitting the ringleaders among the outlying settlements. I've told the whole story in my Castle Hill page, linked below.

'Convict uprising at Castle Hill, 1804', the only picture made at the time. Unknown artist, 1804, National Library of Australia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Castle Hill Government Farm about 1806, in a watercolour attributed to John Lewin. Attributed to John Lewin, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Newcastle

Some of those ringleaders went north. Convicts had been digging coal at the mouth of the Hunter, and in 1801 a camp called King's Town was set up there for coal and timber. It closed within a year. In 1804 King re-opened it as a place of punishment, and the name Newcastle first appears in his commission to Lieutenant Charles Menzies on 15 March 1804. That year King also started the citadel at Fort Phillip, but the ADB calls it "rather a white elephant".

The Sydney Gazette, 1803

In March 1803 King let the government printer, George Howe, start the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, using the government press and type. The first issue came out on 5 March 1803, and it was Australia's first newspaper. King explained to Lord Hobart that he wanted "useful information" spread among the settlers. Wikipedia also credits him with ordering the printing of Australia's first book, the New South Wales General Standing Orders.

The first issue of the Sydney Gazette, 5 March 1803. George Howe, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Orphans, Schools and Vaccine

King took a real interest in the Female Orphan School in Sydney. He was sorry he couldn't open one for boys too, but he took several day schools "under the protection of Government" and had convict boys apprenticed to trades. He paid for the orphan school, and the gaol, with a 5 per cent duty he slapped on imports in June 1802. It wasn't strictly legal, but nobody questioned it, and the ADB says it was the start of colonial revenue being spent on local needs. He also asked London to send smallpox vaccine, and that let the colony's surgeons carry out its first successful vaccinations.

He gave ex-convicts a go as well. He reminded Major Johnston that the government never meant prisoners to be consigned "to Oblivion and disgrace for ever", put men like James Meehan, Andrew Thompson and Father James Dixon into official jobs, and laid the groundwork for the ticket-of-leave system. For a time in 1803 he even let Father Dixon say Mass for the Irish convicts.

Farms, Sheep, Coal and Whales

Under King the government's flocks and herds grew five-fold. He bred the government sheep from hair to wool, imported cattle from India, started coal mining, and tried vines, tobacco, cotton, hemp and indigo. He backed the whalers and sealers, and in 1804 he encouraged the merchant Robert Campbell to ship oil and skins to London in the Lady Barlow in defiance of the East India Company's monopoly. The floods of 1806 wrecked his hope that the colony would feed itself.

At Parramatta, Wikipedia's Old Government House entry says King "appears to have set up Australia's first public botanic garden" under George Caley, Banks's plant collector.

Government House, Parramatta, painted by George William Evans in 1805, when the Kings were using it. George William Evans, 1805, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Old Government House in Parramatta Park today. The first part was built in 1799, and it was enlarged in 1815. It is the oldest surviving public building on the Australian mainland. Photo by BriMiDra, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Exploring and the French

King was a sailor, and he looked outward. In 1801 he sent Lieutenant James Grant to finish exploring Bass Strait and survey Western Port, and Lieutenant John Murray on the voyage that found Port Phillip. On land he sent Francis Barrallier on two trips, slipping round Barrallier's army duties by appointing him ambassador to the "King of the Mountains", and he backed George Caley's expeditions. King Island in Bass Strait was named in 1800 by John Black, a privateer.

Then the French turned up. On 18 June 1802 Nicolas Baudin sailed Géographe into Port Jackson with most of his crew down with scurvy, and Naturaliste came in about ten days later. King, warned by Banks that Baudin was coming, nursed the men and helped fix the ships. Baudin was moved enough to write to the French colonial governors that "Governor King has given the whole of Europe the example of a benevolence which should be known". Baudin sailed out in November 1802 and wrote warmly to King from King Island that December.

Captain Nicolas Baudin, the French explorer King looked after in 1802. State Government Photographer, from an engraving, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Van Diemen's Land

King moved quickly. In 1803 he sent Lieutenant John Bowen to start a settlement on the Derwent. Bowen picked Risdon Cove on the east bank, on George Bass's advice, and the Lady Nelson anchored there on 8 September 1803. The site had poor soil and little water, and when David Collins arrived in 1804 he moved the settlement across the river to Sullivans Cove, which became Hobart. In 1804 King also sent Paterson to found a settlement at Port Dalrymple on the Tamar in the north.

Pemulwuy and the Aboriginal People

King's record with Aboriginal people is mixed. He told William Bligh that he had "ever considered" them "the real Proprietors of the Soil", refused to let them be worked as slaves, and tried to keep a "good understanding". But he also called them "very capricious" and "treacherous".

The Bidjigal warrior Pemulwuy had been resisting the settlers around Parramatta and Prospect for years. On 22 November 1801 King issued an order for him to be brought in dead or alive, with a reward. Pemulwuy was shot dead just before 2 June 1802, possibly by Henry Hacking. King lifted the order against harming Aboriginal people and let them back into the Parramatta and Prospect districts. He also had Pemulwuy's head preserved in spirits and sent it to Banks in England, with a letter calling him "a terrible pest to the colony" but "a brave and independent character".

He liked his Pacific visitors too, and welcomed Maori and Tahitian guests to Sydney.

'Pomarre, King of Otaheite', engraved in 1807 from a drawing owned by Governor King. Unknown artist, 1807, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Recall, Bligh and the Last Voyage

King got London's acceptance of his "resignation" in June 1804, and after that, the ADB says, "his activities slowed down". He wasn't relieved until August 1806, when William Bligh arrived. Before he left, King granted Bligh 1,345 acres, and a week later Bligh granted Mrs King 690 acres in return, described as "Thanks". Both grants were improper, though the ADB says that by the standards of the day King was still "a pillar of rectitude" next to most of his officers. Eighteen months later the same Corps officers who'd beaten King overthrew Bligh in the Rum Rebellion.

William Bligh, who took over from King in August 1806. After J. Ruffell, engraved by J. Condé, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

King boarded the Buffalo on 15 August 1806 and "completely collapsed". The ship didn't sail until 10 February 1807, and after a stormy run round Cape Horn they reached England in November. He pushed the Colonial Office hard for a pension but died on 3 September 1808 before it came through. He was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Lower Tooting, in London. His estate came to about £7,000, little more, the ADB notes, than the value of the cattle he'd claimed from the government herds.

The Family He Left Behind

Anna Josepha stayed in England until 1832, when she came back to New South Wales with Phillip Parker and went to live with Anna Maria and Hannibal Macarthur at The Vineyard. She died in 1844 and was buried at St Mary Magdalene Church there in 1844, on land Phillip Parker King had given for it.

Anna Josepha King's grave at St Mary Magdalene, St Marys. Photo by Maypm, 2009, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Phillip Parker King, born on Norfolk Island in 1791, became a naval surveyor whose charts of the Australian coast were still being published by the Admiralty decades later. He commanded HMS Adventure with the Beagle surveying South America. In 1855 he became the first Australian-born rear admiral in the Royal Navy. He died at North Sydney on 26 February 1856.

Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, about 1855. Unknown photographer, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Of the daughters, Anna Maria married Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur in 1812, and they settled at The Vineyard near Parramatta. Mary, born in Sydney in 1805, married Robert Lethbridge in 1826. Elizabeth married the artist Charles Runciman and stayed in England.

Anna Maria Macarthur (née King) in 1826. Unknown artist, 1826, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mary, the youngest King daughter, born in Sydney in 1805, about 1855. Unknown photographer, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

King was also a decent amateur artist. One of his watercolours was the basis for the William Blake engraving A Native Family of New South Wales in Hunter's 1793 journal. And there's King Street, running from Queens Square down to Darling Harbour, so the name's still under our feet every day.

King as he appeared in Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery's 1899 book. From Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery, 1899, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 23 April 1758 – Born at Launceston, Cornwall
• 22 December 1770 – Joins the navy as captain's servant in HMS Swallow
• 25 December 1778 – Commissioned lieutenant in the Renown
• 1780–1783 – Serves under Arthur Phillip in the Ariadne and the Europe
• October 1786 – Named second lieutenant of HMS Sirius
• January 1788 – Arrives with the First Fleet
• 14 February 1788 – Sails for Norfolk Island with 23 people
• 6 March 1788 – Lands on Norfolk Island
• 8 January 1789 – Son Norfolk born to Ann Inett
• 1790 – Son Sydney born; King sails for England in March
• 11 March 1791 – Marries Anna Josepha Coombe at St Martin-in-the-Fields
• November 1791 – Back on Norfolk Island as lieutenant-governor
• December 1791 – Phillip Parker King born on Norfolk Island
• November 1793 – Ten-day trip to New Zealand to take the two Maori men home
• October 1796 – Leaves Norfolk Island sick with gout
• 5 December 1798 – Promoted post-captain
• November 1799 – Sails for NSW in the Speedy
• 28 September 1800 – Takes command of New South Wales
• November 1801 – Sends Macarthur to England after the duel with Paterson; orders Pemulwuy taken dead or alive
• June 1802 – Pemulwuy killed; Baudin arrives in Port Jackson; 5% import duty
• 5 March 1803 – First Sydney Gazette
• September 1803 – Bowen's party lands at Risdon Cove
• 4–5 March 1804 – Castle Hill rising and Vinegar Hill
• 15 March 1804 – Newcastle named in Menzies' commission
• 1804 – Port Dalrymple settlement founded
• July 1805 – Macarthur returns with a 5,000-acre order
• August 1806 – Bligh takes over
• 10 February 1807 – The Buffalo finally sails
• 3 September 1808 – King dies in England
• 1844 – Anna Josepha King dies at St Marys
• 26 February 1856 – Phillip Parker King dies at North Sydney

Where the Sources Disagree

• Which ship took him to Norfolk Island. Wikipedia says the party left Sydney on 14 February 1788 "on board HMS Sirius". The ADB gives the same date but doesn't name the ship.
• His grandfather. The ADB calls Gidley "a local attorney" in Launceston; Wikipedia names him John Gidley, an Exeter attorney-at-law.
• When the Speedy sailed. The ADB has King sailing on 26 November 1799. Anna Josepha's journal, as listed by the State Library and cited on Wikipedia, begins on 19 November, and Wikipedia's Anna Josepha King article says they sailed in August 1799, which is when the condemned ship first left.
• Who killed Pemulwuy. Wikipedia says he was shot "possibly" by Henry Hacking. It isn't settled.

My Earlier Posts

• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• Arrest of Governor Bligh – The Rum Rebellion – 26 January 1808
• The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta
• Robert Campbell – Campbell's Cove – The Rocks
• The Orphan School – George St
• Governors Of New South Wales From 1788 To 2016
• First Fleet & The Colony Of New South Wales
• Arthur Phillip – First Fleet – King George III's Instructions
• House Of Mary Putland – Governor Bligh's Daughter

Sources

• A. G. L. Shaw, 'King, Philip Gidley (1758–1808)', Australian Dictionary of Biography: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/king-philip-gidley-2309
• Wikipedia, 'Philip Gidley King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gidley_King
• Wikipedia, 'Anna Josepha King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Josepha_King
• Wikipedia, 'Phillip Parker King': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Parker_King
• Wikipedia, 'Pemulwuy': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemulwuy
• Wikipedia, 'Nicolas Baudin': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Baudin
• Wikipedia, 'The Sydney Gazette': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sydney_Gazette
• Wikipedia, 'Old Government House, Parramatta': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Government_House,_Parramatta
• Wikipedia, 'Risdon Cove': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risdon_Cove
• Wikipedia, 'History of Newcastle, New South Wales': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Newcastle,_New_South_Wales
• Wikimedia Commons, image pages linked under each picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Philip_Gidley_King