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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…

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.

The first woman in the United States to qualify as an architect, Marion Mahoney Griffin's legacy in Australia can be seen in the work done in Castlecrag, Canberra and Melbourne with her husband Walter Burley Griffin.

Built on the ridge at Paddington, with views to the harbour and Botany Bay, Juniper Hall was the home of wealthy distiller and ex-convict Robert Cooper, and his large family. It was later used as a school, public building and court, and later subdivided into flats, before the…

The Wallumedegal were the traditional owners of the land that became Cheltenham, but it was made part of the Field of Mars common in 1804, and timber and charcoal were taken from it. When the land was subdivided in the 1890s by William Chorley, covenants prevented buyers from…

Mrs Lillian Dulcie Watson was born in 1904 and interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' Mrs Watson remembers her arrival in Hammondville, a settlement developed near Liverpool during the…

Yasmar is a rare surviving example of a mid-nineteenth century great house and garden. The estate had only three owners before it was transferred to government control during World War II, and has been empty since 1994.

Subdivided in 1906, Seaforth was a new suburb built on the hill above sheltered beaches popular with campers and picnickers.

An industrial training school for destitute children founded on a ship, the Vernon, and its successor Sobraon, was designed to protect and look after wayward boys, as well as giving them useful training.

Part of the old Campbelltown common opened for selection in 1894, the area called Kent Farms was subdivided into 5-acre blocks in the 1920s and named Kentlyn in the 1930s. When neighbouring suburbs were densely developed after World War II, Kentlyn was still zoned for 5-acre…

Originally Dharug country, Arcadia was named in 1894. Timber-getting in the tall forests gave way to citrus orchards by the late nineteenth century, and the area remains semi-rural.

Arrested at 14 for stealing, and sentenced to transportation for life, Mary Beckwith was one of the few convict women who escaped the early colony. Nicolas Baudin made a large donation to the Female Orphanage and took her with him on the Geographe in 1802. Her fate is unknown…

Anna Wood was a 15 year old girl who died in October 1995 after taking an MDMA or ‘ecstasy’ tablet. The coroner's findings ended with a recommendation that young people be educated about the consequences of ingesting illegal drugs, with a section specifically addressing the…

Yemmerrawanne was one of the first Eora men to meet the British, and was a regular visitor to the home of Captain Arthur Phillip, Governor of New South Wales. When Phillip returned to London in December 1792 Yemmerrawanne, and his kinsman Bennelong, travelled with him.…

From its beginnings as a rural and maritime village built on the traditional lands of the Cammeraygal people, Greenwich developed as roads and water connections improved, into a prosperous, leafy commuter suburb.

Pemulwuy was a powerful Aboriginal resistance leader against the British settlers who occupied his land. Through the final decade of the eighteenth century, Pemulwuy led guerrilla attacks against settlers' farms, burning their huts, maize crops and livestock, and plundering…