SYDNEY SUBURBS

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DUNDAS

Location:

Dundas is located 21 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Parramatta, and the electoral division of Bennelong.

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Name origin:

Dundas and surrounding areas were originally known as "The Ponds", a name still reflected in The Ponds Creek. The Ponds/Subiaco Creek is a joint northern tributary of the Parramatta River.

The first private land grants in Sydney made in 1791 were in what is now North East Dundas and adjoining Dundas Valley and Ermington. This consisted of land grants to 14 former convicts and their families along the Ponds and Subiaco Creeks.

Reverend Samuel Marsden selected an area of 100 and named his farm "Dundas Farm" in honour of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who was also the Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. The area, nonetheless, was not known as Dundas until almost a century later.

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville

Styled as Lord Melville from 1802, he was the trusted lieutenant of British prime minister William Pitt and the most powerful politician in Scotland in the late 18th century.

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BTW:

Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765 – 1838) was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society. He played a leading role in bringing Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prominent figure in early New South Wales and Australian history, partly through his ecclesiastical offices as the colony's senior Church of England cleric and as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry, but also for his employment of convicts for farming and his actions as a magistrate at Parramatta.

History has remembered Marsden as the "Flogging Parson", with contemporaries claiming that he inflicted severe punishments (notably extended floggings), even by the standards of his day.

Joseph Holt, who was transported to Sydney following his negotiated surrender after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, gave vivid account in his memoirs of the search for Irish plotters in which he was arrested. Marsden was held to be involved in this secret action by the authorities.

Holt himself was released but witnessed the fate of others. He related:

"I have witnessed many horrible scenes; but this was the most appalling sight I had ever seen. The day was windy and I protest, that although I was at least fifteen yards to the leeward, from the sufferers, the blood, skin, and flesh blew in my face" (as floggers) "shook it off from their cats" (referring to the cat-of-nine-tails scourging lash).

"The next prisoner who was tied up was Paddy Galvin, a young lad about twenty years of age; he was also sentenced to receive three hundred lashes. The first hundred were given on his shoulders, and he was cut to the bone between the shoulder-blades, which were both bare. The doctor then directed the next hundred to be inflicted lower down, which reduced his flesh to such a jelly that the doctor ordered him to have the remaining hundred on the calves of his legs .... 'you shall have no music out of my mouth to make others dance upon nothing'.

Some have written that Marsden ordered such treatment but Holt's memoirs do not explicitly link Marsden to the floggings at Toongabbie on that day.

Cat-o-nine-tails

Marsden's attitudes to Irish Roman Catholic convicts were illustrated in a memorandum which he sent to his church superiors during his time at Parramatta:

"The number of Catholic Convicts is very great... and these in general composed of the lowest class of the Irish nation; who are the most wild, ignorant and savage Race that were ever favoured with the light of Civilization; men that have been familiar with ... every horrid Crime from their Infancy. Their minds being Destitute of every Principle of Religion & Morality render them capable of perpetrating the most nefarious Acts in cool Blood. As they never appear to reflect upon Consequences; but to be ... always alive to Rebellion and Mischief, they are very dangerous members of Society. No Confidence whatever can be placed in them... “

In 1806, Marsden was the originator of the New South Wales "Female Register" which classed all women in the colony (excepting some widows) as either "married" or "concubine". Only marriages within the Church of England were recognised as legitimate on this list; women who married in Roman Catholic or Jewish ceremonies were automatically classed as concubines. The document eventually circulated within influential circles in London, and is believed to have influenced contemporary views of the Australian colony as a land of sexual immorality, some of which survived into 20th-century historiography.

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About Dundas:

Dundas is a leafy green suburb, notably due to its centrepiece The Ponds Walk, which follows the Ponds Subiaco Creek. The Ponds Walk is a 7.7-kilometre walking track which passes through Carlingford, Dundas Valley, Telopea, Dundas, Ermington and Rydalmere

According to the 2021 census, there were 4,959 residents in Dundas. 51.2% of people were born in Australia. The most common countries of birth were China 11.3% and South Korea 6.0%.

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Gallery:

Oatlands House, Dundas in 1927

It is presently a popular wedding venue and located on the grounds of the Oatlands Golf Course.

The Sydney suburb previously known as West Dundas was renamed Oatlands in 1991, the name deriving from an historic house – now known as Oatlands House - built in the 1830s.

Oatlands House today

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DUNDAS VALLEY

Location:

Dundas Valley is located 21 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Parramatta. Dundas Valley is part of the Northern Sydney and Greater Western Sydney regions.

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Name origin:

Lieutenant William Cox, a member of the NSW Corps, in the early 1800s would refer to his land as Dundas Heights. He would view his land from a vantage point of Dundas Heights.

Originally part of Dundas, Dundas Valley was declared a suburb in 2007.

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About:

The valley has been shaped by the Ponds Creek, around which many of the area's parks are located. The valley is bounded by both steep and gentle slopes feeding into the creek.

The area was developed during the 1950s and 1960s with the construction of public housing.

A quarry, later known as the Pennant Hills Quarry, was established in 1832, utilizing basalt from a volcanic plug. This quarry, visited by scientists like Charles Darwin, produced blue metal for road construction.

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