NSWPort & river
Hunters Hill
French settlers and Italian masons built a sandstone village between two rivers.
1847Didier Joubert settles on the peninsula
WHAT STARTED IT
A high, wooded peninsula between the Lane Cove and Parramatta rivers, it was close to the city by water yet private, with sandstone underfoot for building. Its ridge-top road suited houses overlooking the water on both sides.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Didier Joubert bought Mary Reibey’s Figtree Farm in 1847, and with his brother Jules subdivided land and built sandstone villas. Italian stonemasons who arrived in 1855–56 helped build houses, walls and the Garibaldi Hotel, and residents won a separate municipality in 1861.
TURNING POINTS
1847Wine merchant Didier Joubert settles in Hunters Hill and buys Mary Reibey’s Figtree Farm.
1849Ferris’s Rosemorrin smelting works, on the point at the western entrance to Lane Cove, smelt Burra and Kapunda copper ore shipped from South Australia.
1855Passy is built in 1855–56 as the residence of the French Consul, a symbol of the ‘French’ village.
1859Jules Joubert subdivides the Ernest and Ady streets area into 26 allotments, larger ones for river villas.
1861The Municipality of Hunter’s Hill is proclaimed in the Government Gazette on 7 January.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A leafy residential municipality where more than 70 per cent of the area is a conservation area, recognised as Australia’s oldest garden suburb.