NSWFarming
Prospect
The colony’s first small farmers settled under a volcanic hill.
1791Ex-convict farms granted
WHAT STARTED IT
Prospect Hill, Sydney’s largest body of igneous rock, weathered into soils richer than the sandstone-derived soils of the surrounding plain. In July 1791 Governor Phillip placed time-expired convicts on its eastern and southern slopes as farmers.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The farms sat on the colony’s frontier, and fighting with Pemulwuy’s resistance centred here until Samuel Marsden met local Aboriginal people near the hill in 1805. Most of the land was cleared and grazed by the 1820s, and between 1882 and 1888 the Public Works Department built Prospect Reservoir beside it for Sydney’s Upper Nepean water scheme.
TURNING POINTS
1791Ex-convicts are settled on farms around the foot of Prospect Hill; Watkin Tench lists thirteen of them in December.
1805Samuel Marsden meets Aboriginal people near Prospect ‘with a view of opening the way to a reconciliation’.
1810Governor Macquarie visits and is impressed by the comfortable conditions on the farms.
1888Prospect Reservoir is completed after six years’ construction.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A western Sydney suburb in Blacktown City beside Prospect Reservoir, which still supplies Sydney’s water. Prospect Hill has been partly quarried but keeps much of its open pasture.