The following is a brief history of the Inner West of Sydney. For detailed historical information, please contact the Local History Librarians.

Aboriginal History

The Aboriginals in Inner-Sydney belonged to two groups; the Cadigal and the Wangal of the Dharug language group. Wihin these two groups were specific clans or extended family groups.

First white contact was made with the local Aboriginals of the Wangal clan by Captain John Hunter who led an exploration of the Parramatta River. On the 5th of February, 1788, while having breakfast, he was met by Wangal at the location now referred to as Breakfast Point. The Wangal called the area Booridiow-o-gule. Prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in Port Jackson in 1788, the area of land we now know commonly call the Inner West, was the home to several Aboriginal clans.

Cadigal People

The Cadigal were a clan of the Sharug people and spoke the coastal Eora language. Cadigal land lies south of Port Jackson and stretches from South Head to Petersham with part of the southern boundary lying on Cooks River. On the western boarder lies the territory of the Wangal nation, which extends along the southern shore of the Parramatta River to Parramatta.

Wangal People

Although the Wangal travelled about to trade and search for food, their territory was the land on the southern bank of the Parramatta River. The Wangal clan's territory is thought to have originally extended from Darling Harbour, around the Balmain Peninsula almost to Parramatta in the west, the Parramatta River formed the northern boundary although it is uncertain how far south their land extended. Goat Island (which they called Me-mel or Memill) opposite Balmain was also part of their land.

Kameygal People

The Kameygal, woods tribe, lived around the shores of Botany Bay, known to them as Kamay. It is possible that the ridge of high land between Port Jackson and Botany Bay (along which King Street, Newtown, now runs) formed a boundary between the Kameygal and the Wangal/Cadigal.

Bediagal People

The Bediagal were the most closely associated with the Canterbury geographic area between the Cooks River and Georges River.

Wangal, the Kameygal and the Bediagal for thousands of years, roamed through territory which stretched from Port Jackson to Botany Bay.

Two great sites for more information are:

Barani website - www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani

Cadigal Wangal website - www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/cadigalwangal

The European settlement of the Inner West

"Sydney grew outwards in all directions, its population almost doubling in the years 1828 to 1836. Greatly increased demands for space for non-residential purposes within the physical limits of the Town of Sydney, defined in 1833, inevitably meant some deterioration in living conditions. The earliest villa clusters in Sydney were along the harbour's eastern waterfront. As the traveller left George Street and rode out of town along Parramatta Road, he passed Ultimo House, built about 1800 for Surgeon John Harris, set back on a 34-acre estate, and, about the same time two miles down the road, horseman passed the gates leading to George Johnston's Annandale estate."

Solling, Max and Peter Reynolds, 1997. Leichhardt: On the Margins of the City. A Social History of Leichhardt and the Former Municipalities of Annandale, Balmain and Glebe.

European settlement of the Inner West began with a series of land grants in the late 1700's and the early 1800's.

Leichhardt comprises of a collection of 14 land grants between 1789 and 1821. The most prominent belonged to William Balmain, the assistant surgeon on the First Fleet. Balmain was granted 550 acres in 1800 on the peninsula that bears his name. At first settlement of the Balmain peninsula was sluggish due, no doubt, to the lack of transport in the area. To the west, George Johnston was granted 290 acres - the area today known as Annandale; some six years earlier, he had been granted land on the south side of Parramatta Road - today's Stanmore. Originally known as Johnston's Bush, Annandale takes its name from Annan, Johnston's birthplace in Scotland. In Leichhardt, brothers Hugh and John Piper were granted land in 1811, naming the area Piperston. By the 1830's, they had sold off large portions of land, with William Beames buying much of it in 1846 and renaming the suburb after his friend, Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt.

Marrickville's European settlement commenced in 1789. By 1809, all land within the district had been granted. By the 1830's, Marrickville had been consolidated into five great estates. The area was not heavily populated, only several hundred people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including English, Scottish, Italian, German, Dutch and Chinese, lived here. With just a small proportion of the land having been cleared and cultivated, the principal occupations were rural grain-growing, market gardens, timber cutting, dairy farms, and pig and poultry farms.

The first land grants to free settlers in NSW were made in the Strathfield Municipality in 1793 in response to Governor Phillip's request for the introduction of 'practical farmers' to the settlement. These settlers, who arrived on the ship Bellona in January 1793, were listed in the Secretary of State's Despatch of July 14th, 1792, as "Thomas Rose, aged 40, farmer from Blandford, his wife, Mrs. Jane Rose, and their children, Thomas, Mary, Joshua and Richard, also Elizabeth, aged 18, related to the family."

The first man to officially make his home in the Ashfield district was Baron Augustus Alt, the colony's first Surveyor-General. In 1794, the year of his grant, a number of farms covered the Ashfield area already and had considerable value. As the amount of traffic on the Sydney-Parramatta track and on the Liverpool Road increased, so too did the number of staging inns that were needed to service the mail coaches. With the inns came tradesmen such as blacksmiths, wheelrights, saddlers and yardsmen creating the nucelus of a village community.

The earliest recorded settler in Burwood was Sarah Nelson, a free settler who arranged her own passage to Sydney in 1791 after her husband, Isaac Nelson, was convicted and sentenced to seven year penal servitude. Sarah's tiny farm was situated on the spot now called Malvern Hill. It must have been a lonely place in those days because there was no Liverpool Road and the only access to Sydney was a bush track leading out onto Parramatta Road, a little to the east of Cheltenham Road.

Drummoyne was founded in 1794, being main route in and out of the Sydney Settlement. Later, William Wright who was a merchant, whaler and sealer bought land in the northern part of what is today the Drummoyne area, in 1853. He named it Drummoyne Park after his family home at Drummoyne on Clyde in Scotland - in Gaelic, Drummoyne means 'flat topped ridge'.

Detailed information on the history of your local area is available by contacting your local inner-west library. Specialist local history librarians manage local studies collections where you will find a range of resources on the history and heritage of the inner-west, as well as contemporary issues such as traffic & transport, land development and aircraft noise.

See contacts for more information.