BLACKTOWN CITY HISTORY
Blacktown and Doonside
by John Horne
It has been two hundred years since Robert Crawford built his home Hill End in 1823 in the place where the modern suburb of Doonside is , Echoes of the name Crawford can be seen in Doonside today with a Crawford Public School and a Crawford Road . The modern Hill End Road once took travellers from the Richmond Road to the Crawford ’ s family home , Hill End , now long since demolished .
Residents of Yaruga Avenue and Taworri Street on the southern side of the railway line at Doonside sometimes uncover relics like old bricks that date back to the 1823 property Hill End that stood in that area . Oak trees which may be descended from oaks planted two hundred years ago by members of the Crawford family , still grow there .
Robert Crawford ( 1799-1848 ) was born in Greenock , Scotland and travelled to New South Wales on the same ship as Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane who replaced Lachlan Macquarie as the Governor of New South Wales in 1821 . Robert had a residence in Sydney located at 43 Lower Fort Street but in 1822 Governor Brisbane granted him 1000 acres or 405 hectares , which became the property he called Hill End . In 1826 Robert Crawford purchased a neighbouring property on the Richmond Road called Doonside from a man called Joseph Bigge and this is the name that stuck and the suburb is still called Doonside today . Some
Bungarribee House , May 1950 - The suburb , Bungarribee , is named after this property . Many of the trees in this photograph are still growing there today but the beautiful colonial mansion is long gone having been demolished in 1957 by the Overseas Telecommunications Commission ( Australia ).
Bungarrabee , 1858 - Painting by Joseph Fowles ( Note spelling of Bungarribee )
of Robert Crawford ’ s descendants lived in modern Doonside up until recent times .
Another Scottish settler , John Campbell ( 1770-1827 ) and his wife Annabella ( 1774-1826 ) and their children had already been granted 2,000 acres or 800 hectares by Governor Brisbane in 1821 . His estate covered all the land from Eastern Creek to the modern Flushcombe Road and was bordered by the Great Western Highway ( the old Western Road ) and the railway line from Blacktown to Doonside . John Campbell built a mansion on his property which was named Bungarribee House and Robert Crawford was one of his neighbours .
Before the Campbells and Crawfords came to Doonside , the place was the country of the Dharug people who probably called the area Bungarribee . It is an old name but the spelling has changed . Early reports in the Sydney newspaper the Sydney Gazette , called the area Boongarabee .
An Irish convict , Thomas Canny , wrote a letter to his wife who still lived in Ireland , in March 1833 , when he was foreman for the then Bungarribee House owner , Charles Smythe . He pleaded with his wife to join him by any possible means . In his letter he wrote the name for the place where he was living as Boongarrabe . As far as we know his wife never came but the name Bungarribee is still around . The name is not from
Europe and it is not a made-up word but a Dharug word and when Landcom began to build a new suburb in the area on land that was part of Doonside in 2010 , the new suburb was named ‘ Bungarribee .’ An alternative name ‘ Bunya ’ wasn ’ t used .
Bungarribee Creek and Eastern Creek provided a year-round supply of water for the Dharug and there was plenty of food to be had by them . Even though they had lived in the Doonside area for centuries their lives and way of living were overturned when the Europeans came . Warfare and disease thinned their population and over time they were replaced by cattle , convicts , horses , rich settlers and large estates . No longer able to live as they once had , they were pushed to the fringes of society in their own land . Who were the European invaders ? Originally , they were from Britain : English , Irish , Scottish and Welsh convicts , sailors , soldiers and settlers . In 1802 Governor King settled convict shepherds in the area surrounding Rooty Hill ( including modern Doonside and Blacktown ) and for decades convicts with their supervisors ’ husbanded herds of cattle and sheep to provide the Sydney settlement with meat . The country was described as “ like a fine wooded park in England ” ( Mrs E . Hawkins 1822 ) and it had been developed into this kind of landscape by the Dharug long before the Europeans arrived .
In the 1820s owners of very large estates like Bungarribee , Doonside and Flushcombe and their overseers , employees and convicts ( government servants ) lived in the Doonside area . Later these large estates were subdivided .
Hill End , Doonside - Home of the Crawford Family for over one hundred and twenty years ( 1823 to 1940-50s )
A kangaroo sculpture in this park in the modern suburb of Bungarribee reminds us that the Dharug people hunted , thrived and lived in this area long before the Europeans arrived .
The Doonside Festival , July 1980 . Photo : Blacktown Memories .
The railway came through in the 1860s and development took off . Over time other changes occurred and eventually Doonside became what it is today .
So it is that modern Doonside is an old , old locality with connections to many historical events . This year the people of Doonside can celebrate at least two hundred years since colonial settlers arrived and thousands of years of Dharug history and culture that still endures today .
You also can celebrate at the Doonside Festival on Hill End Road on Saturday 22 July 2023 from 9 am to 3 pm .
Blacktown and District Historical Society Incorporated
EMERTON VILLAGE
02 8632 3408
Great Coffee , Great Food , Great Service !
Founded in 1976 to ensure that the history of the Blacktown area would be collected and conserved for all time by tapping into documents and people ’ s memories .
You are welcome to visit our Research Centre , open Tuesdays 10.00 am to 2.00pm , or by appointment .
Grantham Heritage Park BDHS Research Centre 71 Seven Hills Road South , Seven Hills NSW 2147 PO Box 500 Blacktown NSW 2148 Phone 02 9676 1198 www . blacktownhistory . org . au
SHOP 1 , 40 JERSEY ROAD , EMERTON
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Leaf Cafe Emerton Village leafcafeco _ emerton www . leafcafe . com . au
10 ISSUE 28 // JULY 2023 theindependentmagazine . com . au BLACKTOWN CITY INDEPENDENT