Australia Philately: Rose Hill

Rose Hill, named after British politician George Rose, was founded 4 November 1788. It was established on the land of the Burramattagal clan of the Darug people. The Darug people called the area Burramatta (eel place) and regarded it as rich in food from the river and forests.

After the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, they knew they only had enough food to support themselves for a short time. The soil around Sydney Cove proved too poor to grow the amount of food that 1,000 convicts, soldiers and administrators needed to survive. So, on 2 November 1788, Governor Phillip took a detachment of marines along with a surveyor and, in boats, made his way upriver to a location that he called The Crescent, a defensible hill curved round a river bend.

It was the point at which the river became freshwater and therefore useful for farming. Philip Gidley King, Governor of Norfolk Island, who visited Rose Hill on 9 April 1790, described the area as undulating grassland interspersed with magnificent trees with great numbers of kangaroos and emus.

A military outpost was established and convicts were sent to James Smith, a free man who came from England on the Lady Penrhyn, to commence farming. However, Smith was soon found unsuitable to the task and was replaced on 25 March 1789 by Henry Edward Dodd.

In 1789 James Ruse, a convict on the Scarborough, applied to Governor Phillip for a land grant. Governor Phillip, desperate to make the colony self-sufficient, allocated Ruse an allotment at Rose Hill known as Experiment Farm on the condition that he develop viable agriculture. In February 1791, Ruse declared to the authorities that he was self-sufficient, and two months later, in March, he was granted a further 30 acres. Ruse became the first European to successfully grow grain in Australia.

By 4 June 1791 Phillip changed the name of the township to Parramatta, a word derived from Burramatta.