NSWFarming
Petersham
Some of the colony’s first private farms, later a railway suburb.
1793First grants at the Kangaroo Ground
WHAT STARTED IT
Petersham lies on the southern side of Parramatta Road, on high ground first called the Kangaroo Ground. When Lieutenant-Governor Grose began granting land to military men in 1793 to ease the food shortage, the first grants were made here, and in 1794 Grose named the district after Petersham in Surrey.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Barrister Robert Wardell built up an estate of about 2,500 acres here and was shot by escaped convicts while riding over it in September 1834. His heirs cut the land into garden and dairy allotments in the late 1840s, and the opening of Petersham station in 1857 brought house building. A petition of 146 residents led to the Borough of Petersham in 1871; it was absorbed into Marrickville in 1949.
TURNING POINTS
1793Grose’s first land grants to officers are made at the Kangaroo Ground, now Petersham.
1834Robert Wardell is shot by escaped convicts on his Petersham estate on 7 September.
1857Petersham railway station opens on the Sydney–Parramatta line.
1871A petition signed by 146 people for a ‘Borough of Petersham’ with three wards is published on 3 August.
1901The census counts 15,307 people in the borough.
1949Petersham Council becomes part of Marrickville municipality.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A residential inner-west suburb and a centre of Sydney’s Portuguese community, still served by its station on the original Sydney–Parramatta line.