Harrington Park is a heritage-listed former race track, rural estate management and alluvial grazing paddocks located at 1 Hickson Circuit in the south-western Sydney suburb of Harrington Park in the Camden Council local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The original designer is unconfirmed, with 1950-60s additions completed by Marcel Weyland. The homestead was built from 1817 to 1827. The property is privately owned and was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 22 December 2006.
History
The Cowpastures frontier
The Europeans first saw the Camden area in August 1790. Captain Watkin Tench, Lieutenant William Dawes and surgeon George Worgan (late surgeon of the Sirius) undertook an expedition where the country had not previously been explored by the settlers. The second expedition into the Camden area by Europeans was in 1795.
For a short period the settlement was short on livestock because the cattle that arrived on the First Fleet had escaped within five months of its arrival. A large importation from India in May 1795 had ended the shortage. Nonetheless a party was organized by Governor Hunter to investigate the stories of the Aboriginal people that the first herd (which had grown substantially in size) was grazing to the south-west of the Sydney town centre. Sixty-one cattle were found grazing in open country beyond the Nepean River. Hunter named the area the Cowpastures; the name used in England for the common grazing of land near a village.
The country impressed the Europeans but it was too far away from the seat of government to be useful. Governor Hunter left the cattle to multiply undisturbed. In 1800 when the herd numbered about five or six hundred, his successor Governor King tried unsuccessfully to have the cattle mustered. When that plan failed he had a slab hut built at the river crossing place, which acted as a guard house and a base for butchering. Governor King tried to stop settlers from going there.
During King's time the Cowpastures was becoming a fine spot for visiting naval officers and those interested in romantic landscapes. To prevent depredations on the wild herd, on 6 July 1803 Governor King issued a proclamation forbidding people to cross to the western bank of the Nepean River without a permit signed by the Governor (cattle were thought to have been killed by escaped convicts as a source of sustenance). In a later ruling on 1 March 1804 he continued the ban, stating that "no ground whatever ought to be granted or leased to individuals on the other side of the Nepean". It appears that a number of settlers occupied land on the Nepean from 1800, although no grants were issued there until 1805, and early accounts of this occupation suggest that most was on the north-eastern bank.
Historian Alan Atkinson reports the river flats drew admiration from the Europeans who travelled through in 1795. They described "large ponds covered with ducks and the black swan, the margins of which were fringed with shrubs of the most delightful tints". Governor Bligh, a naval man, particularly admired the second type of country in the district rising gradually from the river as "Hills and Dales, waving like the Sea, their Bases nearly uniting and rising as they advance towards the high Mountains" [of the Razorback range]. The Europeans thought the flats were perfect for cattle and the hills would carry sheep. They admired the absence of underbrush – probably achieved through Aboriginal land management practices (burning off) – and felt comfortable with a landscape that reminded them of an English gentleman's park.
In spite of Governor Bligh's ruling that no further grants should be made at Cowpastures, small settlers made their homes on the Sydney side of the Nepean from about 1810. This move was part of a large push to extend the settlement southwards after floods and over-cultivation had blighted the Hawkesbury farming area.
The New South Wales Corps deposed Governor Bligh on 26 January 1808 and during the interregnum, which lasted until Lachlan Macquarie replaced Bligh as Governor in January 1810, members of the Corps served as lieutenant governors. Joseph Foveaux in particular thought Bligh's restriction of land grants was detrimental to the colony's progress and he granted land to all who requested it, spreading the small farmers broadly across the Cumberland landscape. Even so, as John Booth's map of 1810 indicates, the "Cowpastures plains" was remote, at the edge of the known landscape.