Historical Walking Tour of Parramatta

The station opened on 2 July 1860 on the western line, and its complex of buildings and infrastructure records the growth of the NSW railway network from 1859 onward. One of the state's oldest station buildings still in use stands on Platform 4, where a rare signal box also survives. The site was part of the estate of Dr D'Arcy Wentworth. The impressive frontage faces Argyle Street. The State Heritage Register rates the station as exceptional. SHR 00696.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

James Houison built Perth House, its stables and carriageway in 1841 for George Oakes, a landholder and member of the NSW Parliament. Houison also designed many other houses in Parramatta. The garden, planted around 1844-46, still has a Moreton Bay fig. A photograph from 1880 shows the house in use as a girls' school. The register values it as a fine medium-sized domestic building that shows the tastes and lifestyle of around 1850. SHR 00155.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

The register treats the Roxy as a relatively intact interwar picture palace in the Spanish Mission style. It once seated nearly 2000 people in a single auditorium and has since been divided into several screens, which tracks how cinema-going changed after the arrival of the talkies. Its location and origins tie to the growth of Sydney's suburbs, and Parramatta in particular, between the wars. Campaigners helped save it in the 1970s. SHR 00711.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Built in 1819-21 for the emancipist trader and publican John Hodges, Brislington is described as the oldest surviving early colonial two-storey townhouse privately built on the mainland. Local tradition says Hodges won a thousand pounds at cards and had convict bricklayers work a diamond pattern into the back wall. Doctors have lived and practised here since 1851. A fig tree that predates 1857 still stands, and the grounds hold one of the colonists' first wells. SHR 00059.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as St John's Cathedral, Parramatta

The register calls this the oldest church site and continuous place of Christian worship in Australia, dating from 1803. Parramatta was proclaimed one of the colony's first two parishes in 1802, with St Philip's in Sydney. The twin towers, built in 1817-19 under Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth, are all that survives of the first church and are the oldest remaining part of any Anglican church in Australia. SHR 01805.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Two in-situ displays at this address show how Parramatta changed between 1790 and 1823 from a gaol town to a market town. The excavation exposed a rare, well-preserved convict hut and later layers as a bakery, wheelwright's workshop, masonry house and the origins of the Shepherd and Flock Hotel. Pollen samples show cereal crops sown from 1788 to 1790. Left in the ground rather than lifted away, it works as an in-situ museum. SHR 02027.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Three Georgian buildings on O'Connell Street, two cottages at Nos 12 and 14 and the former Travellers Rest Inn at No 16, form what the register calls the earliest and most intact group of cottages in Parramatta. Maps from 1823 and 1844 trace occupation of the corner, held in 1823 by Patrick Kirk. The group shows Georgian style, rare in Australia, and represents the many inns of the period that have since been lost. SHR 00748.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

The register lists this as the burial place of First Fleet graves, with monuments tied to notable events and people. Its records also help explain early urban development and burial customs in the colony. Parramatta began as Governor Phillip's farming settlement of Rose Hill on 2 November 1788; the cemetery is part of that early colonial story. SHR 00049.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Old Government House, Parramatta

Governor Phillip's first farm here in 1788 grew enough food to save the penal colony from starvation, and by 1790 the area was the Governor's Domain. Old Government House is the only 18th-century vice-regal residence still standing intact, and the park has been public since 1857. Governors used the house until 1855, and the National Trust has run it as a house museum since 1970. The record notes strong ongoing links with the local Aboriginal community. SHR 00596.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Built around 1835-37, Roseneath Cottage is a finely detailed Colonial Georgian house. Its first resident, Janet Templeton, introduced Saxon merino bloodlines to NSW in the 1820s-30s and is regarded as one of colonial Australia's most important female pastoralists. The house reflects the rising middle class of the late convict era, enriched by wool exports. Its listing history from 1949 to 1989 also charts the growth of the heritage movement. SHR 00042.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Built with convict labour and designed by David Lennox, the first Superintendent of Bridges in NSW, this bridge across the Parramatta River is one of the oldest surviving bridges in the state. Its flattened arch and unique internal gallery construction mark it as an advance in early 19th-century engineering, and the register calls it an iconic landmark of colonial NSW. The name Parramatta comes from Burramatta, meaning where the eels lie down. SHR 00750.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Laid out as a Victorian public square and village green from 1837, this is a rare example of the early public parks movement in NSW, with Moreton Bay figs, a camphor laurel and a Bunya pine from the 1860s-70s. Beneath it lie the sites of Parramatta's second gaol, used from 1804 to 1841, and its first female factory, from 1804 to 1821. The square is also linked to the royal visit of Prince Alfred in 1868. SHR 01997.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory