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Starting with a small Chinese child in The Rocks, the smallpox epidemic of 1881-82 had large consequences for the Chinese community who were further reviled and restricted and for the dozens of Sydneysiders quarantined for months at North Head. Despite the relative mildness…

Sentenced to seven years transportation for theft, William H Bennett progressed from being a convict in a 'town gang' at Parramatta to being a highly respectable baker and landholder. Like other upwardly mobile emancipists, William Bennett negotiated the…

The Alexander was the largest and most notorious convict transport in the First Fleet carrying 'ye worst of land-lubbers'.

George Peat established a ferry service across the Hawkesbury around 1840, which was eventually joined to Pearces Corner by road, providing a new route to Newcastle. In 1945 the ferry was replaced with a road bridge.

Annie Wyatt, a founder of the National Trust (NSW), lived here from 1926, and the unofficial first meeting of the trust was held in the house in 1945.

Home to the Muringong clan of the Darug people, the country that became Currans Hill was granted to Europeans in the early nineteenth century and agricultural for much of its history after that. It was developed for suburban housing from the 1990s.

The Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre grew out of the Black Theatre and the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Scheme, and aimed to create opportunities for Indigenous people to have careers in professional dance.

Traditional country of the Barramattagal people, the land that became Ermington was granted by Governor Phillip to convicts and marines in the 1790s. It remained semi-rural well into the twentieth century, with orchards, poultry farms and nurseries only giving way to suburban…

The first St Mary's was built slowly between 1821 and 1835, and subsequently added to, but burned down in 1865. The new cathedral, also built slowly in sections, was not finished until 1928, and the towers were only added in 2000.

Originally home of the Barramattagal, the Toongagal and the Bidjigal people, Harris Park evolved as land was granted to colonists which was eventually broken up for residential subdivisions when a railway station was established in 1880.

Home to the coastal Aboriginal people, much of Balgowlah Heights was virgin bushland until the early-twentieth century. Until this time the area mainly comprised public reserves and harbour defences, until the bush finally gave way to the backyard.

The Parramatta Female Factory is the largest and oldest surviving convict women's site in Australia. Operating between 1821 and 1848, it was a refuge for women and children, elderly and sick women; a marriage bureau; a place of assignment and moral reform; a penitentiary; a…

Northmead's sandstone houses and other structures were quarried locally, and were just part of the output of the long quarrying history of the area in the nineteenth century.

Known as North Engadine until 1971, Yarrawarrah's cheap land, isolation and influx of camp-dwellers during the Depression made it a poor relation of surrounding suburbs. Development after the 1960s releases of Crown land has resulted in a pleasant bushland suburb.

Wallumedegal country until the Europeans arrived, the land that became Denistone was granted to Europeans in the 1790s and became farms owned by some of the colony's leading families. Subdivision during the twentieth century created a series of pleasant suburban localities in…

Mr Carl Borowsky came to Liverpool as a boy in 1923. He was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900-1960' project. Here he remembers Liverpool in the 1920s when it was dominated by horse transport and…

Product of a public controversy about neglected and wayward children, Biloela Reformatory was seen as an advance on imprisoning girls in adult gaols, but it quickly became a dysfunctional institution and lasted less than a decade.

Now a vast correctional centre, encompassing many institutions, Long Bay prison complex was originally designed by Walter Liberty Vernon, to further the penal reform ends of William Neitenstein. It included both men's and women's prisons, and over the century since it was…

Granted to Robert Pymble, a free settler from Hertfordshire, the area which was to become Pymble was farmland and orchards for most of the nineteenth century. Development followed the railway line, and Pymble became a desirable leafy suburb.

Grand theatre on Castlereagh Street, which was burnt down and rebuilt before again burning down in 1872.