NSWFarming
Toongabbie (NSW)
Convicts cleared it to feed the colony; a railway later made it a suburb.
1791Government farm established
WHAT STARTED IT
By 1791 the colony needed more grain land to avert a food shortage, and a second government farm was opened about 2.4 kilometres beyond Parramatta, where Toongabbie and Quarry creeks meet. Up to 500 convicts cleared and cropped the ground.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The farm’s wheat, maize and barley were critical to the colony in the early 1790s, but it declined as private grants hemmed it in and the Castle Hill farm opened. The land was subdivided in 1860–61, and the modern suburb grew around the railway station opened in 1880, west of the old farm site now called Old Toongabbie.
TURNING POINTS
1791A government farm and convict settlement is laid out beside Toongabbie Creek.
1792David Collins records that the settlements beyond Parramatta are now to be called Toongabbie.
1793Convicts build a brick barn and grain store; storms destroy it in 1795.
1861George Oakes buys 240 hectares including the whole former farm and uses it for grazing.
1880Toongabbie railway station opens on 26 April, at first an unstaffed shed.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A densely settled residential suburb of western Sydney centred on its railway station. The government farm site survives as parkland at Palestine Park and Oakes Reserve and is on the State Heritage Register.