Parramatta

“ Parramatta was one of the earliest seats of the tweed manufacture, but its principal industrial dependence has been on the fruit trade. With the exception of Prospect and Pennant Hills, where there is an outburst of trap rock, the surface soil is the disintegration of the Wainamatta shale, which is well suited for orangeries and orchards. The first grain grown in the colony was harvested at Parramatta, then called Rosehill. ”

“ The buildings at Rose-Hill being carried on so far as to form hereafter a regular town between Rose-Hill and the landing-place in the creek, Governor Phillip named it Parramatta; the name given by the natives to the spot on which the town was building. Grants of land were now given to those who became settlers; and those who had been permitted to clear ground in their leisure hours, and on one day of the week which was allowed them for that purpose, went on very well. ”

“ When it brought the convicts into a town as it did at Parramatta, it was an unmixed evil. Marsden, the senior chaplain, and Hannibal Macarthur, the two chief magistrates at Parramatta, opposed it strongly and refused to enforce the order; and Bayly, Townson and Sir John Jamison agreed with them. Anything which brought the convicts together in large numbers was open to serious objections, and these were all the stronger if after the muster there was no church within three miles for them to go to. ”

“ I felt I was a "gone coon" if I let this sort of thing go on; so I asked them what they were doing in Sydney, dined with them the same evening, and by that day week we had made up a picnic to Parramatta, where we could have the pleasure of a boat on the salt-water creek that people there call the Parramatta River, and could have a pleasant country ramble and a dinner out in the sunshine, with the thermometer at 85° in the shade, or thereabout—capital weather for plum-pudding; but we had plum-pudding and roast-beef, too, with iced champagne ”

“ All that was needed was some easy mode of access to and from the city, and, if possible, the closing up of the Field of Mars common, which, besides being a harbour for questionable characters, cut off the settlement from Ryde, Pennant Hills, and Parramatta.
The only road to Sydney was a circuitous one involving a crossing of the Parramatta river by means of an antiquated punt ferry at Tarban—a distance of eleven miles; as the crow flies the actual distance from Hunter’s Hill to the Sydney Post Office is barely four and a-half miles. ”

“ At Parramatta the principal labour was the getting in and housing the maize, and preparing ground for the next year's grain. The foundations of two material buildings were laid, a town-hall and an hospital. The town-hall was intended to include a market-place for the sale of grain, fish, poultry, live stock, wearing apparel, and every other article that convicts might purchase or sell. An order establishing this regulation had been given out at Parramatta, and a clerk of the market appointed to register every commodity that was brought for sale or barter ”

“ The settlers in and about Parramatta had not so much ground in cultivation, and were fewer in number than those of the Hawkesbury district. A widow woman of the name of Daveny, whose husband had been a superintendant of convicts, had fifty acres in wheat, and twenty-three in maize. ”

“ Governor Phillip, therefore, ordered her to England, and she sailed on the 26th of November.
From the debilitated state in which many of the convicts were landed from the last ships, the number of sick were greatly increased; the surgeon's returns on the 27th, being upwards of four hundred sick at Parramatta; and the same day medicines were distributed to one hundred and ninety-two at Sydney. To the number of sick at Parramatta, upwards of one hundred may be added, who were so weak that they could not be put to any kind of labour, not even to that of pulling grass for thatching the huts. ”

“ This agricultural settlement in the neighbourhood of what is now the old town of Parramatta was planned by Phillip, and from the success of its first settler dates the beginning of the young colony's self-dependence.
At headquarters an heroic attempt was made, in spite of the rocky soil, to grow something. A farm was cleared in the cove next to Sydney, and about nine acres of corn planted. The place is now the site of the Botanic Gardens, and the bay formed by its shores, like many another of the inlets of Port Jackson, commemorates by its name—Farm Cove—the earliest times of settlement. ”

“ Scarcely had the last court of judicature sent one man to the gallows, when a highway robbery was committed between the town of Sydney and Parramatta. Three men rushed from an adjoining wood, and, knocking down a young man who was travelling to the last mentioned town, rifled his pockets of a few dollars. On his recovering, finding that only one man remained, who was endeavouring to twist his handkerchief from his neck, he swore that no one person should plunder him, and had a struggle with this fellow, who, not being the strongest of the two, was secured and taken into Parramatta. ”

“ Bathurst was reached on their return journey, on June 27th.
In March, 1824, he botanised about the heads of the Murrumbidgee and the Monaro and Shoalhaven Gullies, and in September of the same year, went north by sea with Oxley to Moreton Bay, to investigate that locality and pronounce on its suitability as a settlement site. In March, 1825, he left Parramatta, threaded the Pandora Pass once more, and ascended to Liverpool Plains, returning to Parramatta on the 17th of June. In 1826 and the beginning of the following year, he visited New Zealand. ”

“ On the first day of this month, information was received from Parramatta, that a body of twenty male convicts and one female, of those lately arrived in the Queen transport from Ireland, each taking a week's provisions, and armed with tomahawks and knives, had absconded from that settlement, with the chimerical idea of walking to China, or of finding in this country a settlement wherein they would be received and entertained without labour. ”

“ It was soon perceived, that the punishment of being sent from Parramatta was more dreaded by the convicts than any corporal correction, however severe, that could have been inflicted on them. The being deprived of a comfortable hut and garden, and quitting a place whence the communication with Sydney was frequent, particularly when shipping were in the cove, operated so powerfully with one offender, who was ordered out to the New Grounds, that he chose rather to make an attempt to destroy himself than be sent thither ”

“ The spoil, no doubt, soon passed from one hand to another in the practice of that vice which, as already mentioned, too generally prevailed among the lower class of the people in the colony.
At Parramatta some people were taken up and punished, on being detected in issuing to themselves from the stores, where they were employed, a greater proportion of provisions than the ration. This offence had often been committed; and though it was always punished with severity, yet while convicts were employed, it was likely, notwithstanding the utmost vigilance, to continue. ”

“ Having dispatched this ship, the governor set off on a visit to the wild cattle. Leaving Parramatta on the 24th, he crossed the Nepean the following day, but much further to the northward than he had done before. In this direction he and his party traversed a new tract of country, which was not only beautiful to the eye*, but highly calculated for cultivation and pasturage. ”

“ As they had never been limited in the number of women servants which they considered requisite to their domestic concerns, it was hoped that they would afford every assistance in their power, which might lead to the detection of imposition, and serve to correct any abuse of such indulgence.
To the list of public buildings, which, young as was the settlement, time had overthrown, was now added the government-house at Parramatta; the roof of which falling-in in some bad weather, the building was surveyed, and found so weak and decayed as not to admit of repairs. ”

“ Many complaints having been made by the settlers, of depredations committed on their Indian corn by some of the convicts, it was ordered, that every convict residing at Parramatta, who should be fully convicted before a magistrate of stealing Indian corn, should, in addition to such corporal punishment as he might think it necessary to adjudge, be sent from Parramatta to the New Grounds, there to be employed in cultivation. ”

“ He arrived at Sydney in June 1790, had a grant of land near Parramatta, and, like other members of the corps, engaged in various commercial pursuits. He was made commandant at Parramatta in January 1793, was promoted captain 5 June 1795, and seems to have retired in 1804. At Elizabeth Farm, as he called his settlement, he paid great attention to agriculture, and is said to have been the first to use an English plough. ”

“ Having described the condition of the females sent to the Factory at Parramatta, it would be as unnecessary as painful to comment further on the inaptitude of that establishment, in its present circumstances, to produce any reformatory effects; particularly as a hope is confidently indulged that the existing evils will soon be lessened, if not wholly obviated, by the erection of another Factory in the same neighbourhood. ”

“ At Sydney, the little ground that was in cultivation belonged to individuals; the whole labour of the convicts employed in clearing ground being exerted at Parramatta, where the soil, though not the best for the purposes of agriculture (according to the opinion of every man who professed any knowledge of farming) was still better than the sand about Sydney, where, to raise even a cabbage after the first crop, manure was absolutely requisite. ”

“ The effects of this measure were flagrant: a letter, addressed by Marsden, the chaplain, to Macquarie, depicted the wretched condition of the prisoners. The scenes of dissipation which passed before him deprived him of repose. Free women, living at Parramatta, unprovided with public shelter, ran headlong into vice, and dropped all around him, slain by rum and dissipation. He stood aghast and powerless before the devastation: at times he observed, "I envy the situation of the most menial servant, who is free from this solemn and sacred responsibility." ”

“ On the day appointed, it appeared that many were victualled both at Sydney and Parramatta, and several other impositions were detected and abolished.
In a settlement which was still in a great measure dependant upon the mother country for food, it might have been supposed that these people would have endeavoured by their own industry to have increased, rather than by robbery and fraud to have lessened, the means of their support: but far too many of them were most incorrigibly flagitious. ”

“ The barracks for the assistant surgeons, and the tower of the intended church, were nearly completed during this month, and the paling round the new store-house was begun. The Reliance, whose leaks had been discovered, was strengthened with riders, several people being employed to bring in timber for that purpose. These formed some of the public works at Sydney. At Parramatta, Toongabbie, and the other interior settlements, all were actively employed in securing the abundant crops which every where promised to reward the industry of the settler and the labourer. ”

“ It is also particularly recommended to the principal inhabitants of the towns of Sydney and Parramatta, that they select a few of the most respectable of their number, in each division of these towns, whom they may authorise to consider of the most effectual means of detecting the robbers, and bringing them to trial ”

“ The seal fishery in Bass' Strait was carried on with ardour--many boats were employed in catching and preparing fish along the coast--sloops and schooners were upon the stocks--various detached settlements were in a course of establishment, and more in project. And all this, with the commerce carried on from Sydney to Parramatta and the villages at the head of the port, and to those on the rivers falling into Broken and Botany Bays, made the fine harbour of Port Jackson a lively scene of business, highly interesting to the contemplator of the rise of nations. ”

“ Notwithstanding the lenity and indulgence which had been shown on his Majesty's birthday, in pardoning the plunderers of gardens and the public grounds, and by issuing an extra allowance of provisions to every one, the governor's garden at Parramatta was that very night entered and robbed by six men, who assaulted the watchman, Thomas Ocraft, and would have escaped all together, had he not, with much resolution, secured three of them for punishment. ”

“ There is a tree called the Mangrove, which grows very plentifully on the banks of the Parramatta river; sometimes the water is very high for days together, and the oyster spawn gets fixed in the mud on the branches, and so they grow and are gathered in their season.
One of the most delightful excursions from Sydney is to the top of the Blue Mountains, where there are several villages and some exceedingly fine and interesting scenery. The summit of the mountains is about 3,500ft. above sea-level, and is seventy miles from Sydney, being reached by a picturesque zigzag railway. ”