A journey in time from government domain to “people’s park”

Leaving the fringe of Parramatta CBD at O’Connell Street, we venture west onto the north bank of Parramatta Park… traditionally, before the white colonial takeover, this was Burramatta Darug country. Passing the car park at the front of Bankwest Stadium, we soon arrive at the park’s first slice of colonial history. The sloping grassland running down to the river—now the habitat mainly of ibises and swamp hens—was once Government Farm, the infant Sydney colony’s first successful farm. The early settlers (such as Dodd’s Farm) found the undulating fertile land here more conducive to growing crops¹ than the sandy soil and unreliable water supply at Farm Cove.The colony’s first governor Arthur Phillip gave the Parramatta area its first English name, Rose Hill².

Following the riverside path we come to the Old Kings Oval with its small Doug Walters Pavilion, a reminder that the 60s and 70s star cricketer played for the local Cumberland team when he first came to Sydney. The name of the oval is a clue to the fact that the prestigious independent boys school, the Kings School, occupied the surrounding land for 130 years (to the late 1960s). A sign on the pathway alerts us to another by-gone sporting activity of the park – there was also a (horse)racetrack that snaked around the river in the early colonial days.

If we cross the skimpy narrow metal foot bridge and head back towards O’Connell Street, we can spot the park’s principal building, Old Government House, an impressive grand Georgian mansion with a fascinating life story. Construction commenced in 1799, thus the UNESCO-listed structure is the oldest surviving public building in Australia. For the early governors this was effectively a country retreat for them, a preferred residence because of it’s superior air and distance from the crime-infested, unsanitary conditions of Sydney Town.

From 1910 Government House was leased to the Kings School, giving it another imprint on the park’s history. Till 1965 the former governors’ residence was home to junior boarders of the school. Two years after that the school moved holus-bolus to North Parramatta. Today OGH operates as a National Trust heritage site and the repository of Australia’s best collection of early 1800s colonial furniture.

Leaving OGH and continuing in the direction of Westmead we pass Governor Brisbane’s Roman-style bath house. It fell into a dilapidated state by the late 19th century and was subsequently converted (or reduced) into a (small) bandstand, which is it’s present state of obsolescence.

Just a bit further on from the Bath House we arrive at a curious-looking military monument to the Boer War. Mounted on a high platform supported by thick classical columns is a small 19th century canon on wheels. Menacing positioned at such an elevated vantage-point, you could just imagine it being used to take potshots at pesky Afrikaner farmer-soldiers skulking round the Transvaal veld or on the Rand.

Also near here we happen upon another, very different monument. This represents a tribute to a home-grown aviator pioneer of the Parramatta district, William Ewart Hart. The stone inscription informs us that he was “Parramatta’s Flying Dentist” circa 1912, believed to be the first Australian to fly an aircraft on this continent.

Looping round the path onto Railway Pde we take the road back to O’Connell St and the last stop on our ramble around Parra Park. The George St Gatehouse is one of six such guarding the entrances to the park. Picture-book English Tudor in style, it’s the most iconic, and since it was restored in 2014, the most aesthetically pleasing of the gatehouses.

Map identifying the main physical sections of Parra Park: Mill Race Flat, Pavilion Flat, The Crescent, Cattle Paddock, Salter’s Field, Old Orchard, West Domain.

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¹ the result of indigenous land management methods like the regular burning of grasslands

² the first settlement in Parramatta (1788) was a redoubt built by soldiers at The Crescent, a geological feature comprising flat alluvial ground contained by a bend in the river, situated to the south-west of OGH

Bibliography
‘Rose Hill and Government Farm’, Parramatta Park, www.parrapark.com.au

‘Old Government House’, (Sonya Gellert), Discover Parramatta, www.discoverparramatta.com.au

Levins, Chris, Parramatta Park, Dictionary of Sydney, 2010, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_park, viewed 27 Feb 2021

‘The Crescent’, (Michaela Ann Cameron), Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/