Parramatta

Named for its traditional owners, the Burramattagal, Parramatta was the site of the second European settlement in Sydney, and an early successful farm. Until the 1850s many governors preferred to live in Parramatta Government House. The railway arrived in 1857 and the town became prosperous, with its own suburbs by the 1870s, business and industrial districts, and large medical and educational institutions.

Parramatta's General Hospital for convicts was located on Marsden Street overlooking the Parramatta River from 1789 to 1818. Initially two thatched sheds that were known as the Tent Hospital, these were replaced in 1792 by a Brick Hospital. However, conditions continued to be woefully inadequate and led to the construction of a third hospital for convicts, the Colonial Hospital, on the same site in 1818.

In colonial times, the area known today as Prince Alfred Park contained the colony's gaol and was known as 'the Gaol Green' and 'the Hanging Green.' Regular public punishments occurred there until the 1840s when the gaol moved to a new location and the area became a public reserve. A visit by the Duke of Edinburgh in the 1860s saw the area renamed Alfred Square. The park took on grander elements in the twentieth century, eventually transforming into the vibrant civic space it is today.

Governor Phillip established Australia's first inland settlement, Parramatta, on a site called 'The Crescent' an area of flat alluvial ground contained by a bend in the river in the Burramattagal's traditional hunting grounds. The first Government House in Parramatta stood within The Crescent, and later the Governor's Dairy. The area was redeveloped in 2014 to host public events.

Australia's first female factory at Parramatta (known as the 'Factory Above the Gaol') was Governor King's attempt at finding a solution to the problem of accommodating the colony's abundance of unemployed convict women at the same time as protecting them, and the young colony, against corrupt influences. In its industrial capacity, the factory in excelled in its early years. As a refuge-cum-guardian of public morality, it fell considerably short with severe over-crowding and deteriorating buildings.

At the request of Governor Macquarie, a new convict hospital was built at Parramatta and opened in 1818. Designed by John Watts, the building was based on a military hospital and proved grossly inadequate: only half the expected number of patients could be treated there, men and women were placed side-by-side, and diseases such as dysentery, tuberculosis and syphilis were rife. The hospital officially closed on 31 March 1848, reopening as Parramatta District Hospital in June the same year and bringing the era of convict healthcare to a close.

Prior to European settlement, the waterway we now call the Parramatta River was a shared food source, a highway and a territorial boundary for the Wangal, Wallemudegal, Gammeraygal and Burramattagal peoples. Colonisation dramatically reshaped the ecology of the river; the natural cycles of climate and tide that had long influenced the waterway have been joined by other diverse social forces; economic, cultural and technological. Agriculture, river transport, land development and heavy industry have left a long term legacy despite recent environmental remediation.