Macquarie Five Towns

2010 - 2011

The year 2010 marked the 200 year anniversary of the commencement of the Governorship of Lieutenant Colonel Lachlan Macquarie. Hawkesbury Regional Museum honoured this celebration with an exhibition that looked at Macquarie’s impact on the Hawkesbury settlers and the subsequent creation of the five Macquarie Towns.

On Monday 3 December 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie set about the task of marking out five new towns in the Hawkesbury, all to be on the Commons which had been set out by his predecessor, Governor King, in 1804. Accompanied by Assistant Surveyor George Evans, Acting Surveyor James Meehan, Magistrate William Cox, the Rev. Robert Cartwright and members of his own staff, Macquarie rode across the Richmond Hill Common (which stretched from Yarramundi Lagoon to just east of the Windsor Road from Sydney) looking for appropriate sites. Macquarie’s vision was to improve the morals of the colonists by encouraging marriage, provide for education, prohibit the use of spirituous liquors, and to increase agriculture and stock, thus ensuring the certainty of food to the inhabitants under all circumstances.

The establishment of towns and communities in structured permanent locations was the ultimate goal and in these early days of his governorship he so named and designated the principle locations of what are now known as the five Macquarie Towns of the Hawkesbury; Richmond, Windsor, Wilberforce, Pitt Town and Castlereagh.

Click on the PDF link below for more information on the exhibition.

Macquaries Five Towns (605 KB)

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