Emu Heights, New South Wales
Emu Heights is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Emu Heights is located 58 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Penrith. Emu Heights sits on the land of the Dharug people, who are the traditional owners of the area. Sitting on the Blue Mountains escarpment and on the western side of the Nepean river, the suburb is just outside the Sydney metropolitan area. It is bounded to the east by the Nepean River and to the west by  Blue Mountains local government area. History. The Dharug people inhabited the land now known as Emu Heights and are the traditional owners of the land. Emu Heights was established by George Innes, a free settler from Bathurst who obtained in 1831, near McCann's Island and named it Emu Heights. However, the name "Emu Heights" wasn't officially assigned to the neighbourhood until early 1976. Schools. Emu Heights Public School was founded in 1972. The school had only eighty seven pupils and three teachers, but now has over three hundred students enrolled. The school's teaching revolves around seven Key  Learning Areas, English, Mathematics, Science, ICT, Human society and its environment, the Creative Arts and Personal Health and Social Development. Parks. Clissold Park is host to great diversity of Australia's fauna and flora and features basketball, netball and children's playground facilities. The park does not have formal field sporting facilities but is more than large enough for such and regularly used by the close knit people of Emu Heights for community events. There is a peaceful stream that flows down from the mountain escarpment, though this stream has been recorded to flood the whole park and north along  Wedmore Rd in major storms. (The stream was diverted east by housing developers in the 1980s who followed a farmers drainage channel rather that the original flow north beside Wedmore Rd to the Nepean river). A larger unnamed parkland also exists at the north end of Emu Heights, between the suburb and the Nepean River, giving wide access to the river. Sporting fields and golf facilities are being considered for this parkland. Fishing and canoeing are popular as this section of the river is not used by power boats. The section of river accessible from Emu heights is home to  a large variety of native and migratory waterbirds. In the early 1960s, the native egg laying mammal the platypus could still be found in this section of the river but has since become extinct. Population. According to the 2016 census of Population, there were 3,289 people in Emu Heights.