NSWRail & telegraph
Riverstone
A railway siding that became a meatworks town.
1864Station opens on the Richmond railway
WHAT STARTED IT
Riverstone takes its name from Riverston, the farm Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice O’Connell named after his Irish birthplace when Macquarie granted him land here. The village grew around a station on the Blacktown–Richmond railway, opened in 1864, which gave the farms and later the meatworks a direct line to Sydney.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
In 1878 Benjamin Richards, a Richmond butcher and grazier, built a slaughterhouse beside the line, and his meatworks became the town’s main employer for more than a century. Beef and mutton went to Sydney by special train from the siding. Six men died when a wall collapsed during a fire at the works in 1970, and the meatworks closed in 1994.
TURNING POINTS
1864The Blacktown–Richmond railway opens with a station at Riverstone; the first regular train runs on 1 December.
1867In the great June flood, the Blacktown station master rows out to rescue the Carberry family from their attic at Riverstone.
1878Benjamin Richards sets up a beef slaughterhouse beside the railway, the start of the Riverstone meatworks.
1883Riverstone Public School opens with 42 children.
1970Six men are killed when a fire brings down a three-storey wall at the meatworks.
1994The Riverstone meatworks closes.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A growing suburb in Sydney’s north-west, where new estates now surround the old railway village and station.