page_title: Greater Western Sydney
section_title: European colony
hierarchical_section_title: Greater Western Sydney / History / European colony
caption_attribution_description: English: A painting by an unknown artist is of the Battle of Vinegar Hill, where several hundred convicts broke out of Castle Hill prison farm to take on the British redcoats. Photo: National Library of Australia
context_page_description: Greater Western Sydney is a large region of the metropolitan area of Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia that generally embraces the north-west, south-west, central-west, and far western sub-regions within Sydney's metropolitan area and encompasses 13 local government areas: Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown, Camden, Campbelltown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, Hills Shire, Liverpool, Parramatta, Penrith, Wollondilly and the western portion of the City of Parramatta Council. It includes Western Sydney, which has a number of different definitions, although the one consistently used is the region composed of the nine local government authorities which are all members of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils. The NSW Government's Office of Western Sydney uses the broader Greater Western Sydney definition to refer to the region.
  Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity occurred in the Sydney metropolitan area from around 30,000 years ago. The Darug people lived in the area that was greater western Sydney before European settlement regarded the region as rich in food from the river and forests.
context_section_description: Old Toongabbie is noted for being the third settlement set up after the British occupation of Australia began in 1788 after Sydney and Parramatta, respectively. During that year, Governor Arthur Phillip had reconnoitred several places before choosing Parramatta as the most likely place for a successful large farm. The Sydney Cove region originally settled in 1788 turned out to be unsuitable for farming, and after a number of years of near-famine in the colony, efforts were made to relocate food production inland to hopefully more climatically stable regions. Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils and fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion and moved many of the convicts from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life. Nevertheless, poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie. 
  In February 1793, the Auburn area was established as the first free-agricultural settlement thanks to Governor Phillip's repeated applications to the British government for free settlers, and by the end of that decade Prospect, West Pennant Hills, Baulkham Hills and Greystanes were established. Eighteen months after the landing of the First Fleet, an exploring party led by Captain Watkin Tench set out to further findings made by Governor Arthur Phillip where, in 1789, they discovered the broad expanse of the Nepean River and Penrith. Windsor Road, one of the oldest roads in Sydney, was opened in 1794. In 1795, Matthew Flinders and George Bass explored up the Georges River for about 20 miles beyond what had been previously surveyed, and reported favourably to Governor Hunter of the land on its banks. The earliest recorded white settlement in the Fairfield district is described in William Bradley's Journal where he noted an expedition from Rose Hill to Prospect Creek to determine whether Prospect Creek led to Botany Bay.
  The Battle of Parramatta, a major battle of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars, occurred in March 1797 where resistance leader Pemulwuy led a group of Bidjigal warriors, estimated to be at least 100, in an attack on a government farm at Toongabbie, challenging the British Army to fight.  On 4 March 1804 Irish convicts rose up in Rouse Hill as one, in what was to become known as the Castle Hill convict rebellion.
  Governor Lachlan Macquarie and Mrs Macquarie preferred the clean air of rural Parramatta to the unsanitary and crime-ridden streets of Sydney CBD and transformed Old Government House, Parramatta, into an elegant Palladian-style home in the English manner. Originally constructed under Governor John Hunter in 1799 to reflect the economic importance of the Parramatta district, the building remains today Australia's oldest public building and was given World Heritage Listing by UNESCO in 2010. 
  In 1803 a government stock farm was established in what was to become the Riverstone/Marsden Park area, on the basis of the abundant water supply and good grazing land there, and also in Smithfield, due to its good soil and dependable water supply. Windsor is the fourth-oldest place of British settlement on the Australian continent, where European settlers utilised the fertile river flats for agriculture. Governor Phillip Gidley King began granting land in the area to settlers in 1804 with Captain Daniel Woodriff's 1,000 acres (4.0 km²) on the banks of the river the first land grant in the area.
caption: Castle Hill Irish rebellion of 1804.
exif: {}