Bytes: SYDNEY SUBURBS

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DURAL

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Location:

Dural is a semi rural suburb of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, 36 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district in the local government areas of Hornsby Shire and The Hills Shire. Dural is part of the Hills District.

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Name Origin:

There is some dispute over the origin of the name 'Dural'. It has been claimed that Dural is an Aboriginal word used by the Dharug language group meaning 'gully' or 'valley'. Dural was also recorded as meaning 'valley' in surveyor James Meehan's Field Book No 128 in 1817, and the Reverend WB Clarke gives Dural the meaning of 'valley' in his diary entry of November 1840. His informant was Nurragingy, a traditional owner of the land, who was then living at North Rocks.

However, until recently, Dural was also thought to mean 'burning logs', from the Aboriginal words dooral dooral. But the supposition that Dural means 'a hollow tree on fire', 'smoking hollow tree' or 'burning logs' was only introduced into the locality by the Rector of St Jude's Church in the 1940s, and was taken from the Wiradjuri language.

Dural also appears in early records as Douro, Dooral and Dure Hill. A map by surveyor Meehan, dated 1817, shows the location for Dural as 'Doora', and a similar word appears in the Sydney Gazette in 1805. Meehan also marked out a road between Castle Hill and Dural, but it remained a bush track until 1825, when work commenced on the Great North Road.

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History:

Located on the Old Northern Road, a historic road built by convicts between 1825 and 1836 to link early Sydney, in the Colony of New South Wales, with the fertile Hunter Valley to the north.

BTW:

Built by convicts between 1825 and 1836, it traverses over 260 kilometres (162 mi) of the rugged terrain that hindered early agricultural expansion. The road was an engineering triumph, with some sections constructed to a notably high standard. It was not an unqualified success in practical terms. Apart from the steep grades, there was a lack of water and horse feed along the route. For these reasons it quickly fell into disuse with the development of alternative means of getting to the Hunter Valley, such as steamships and newer roads. Much of the road fell into total disuse while other parts were absorbed into the urban and rural road network.

The road is of such cultural significance it was included on the Australian National Heritage List on 1 August 2007 as a nationally significant example of major public infrastructure developed using convict labour and on the UNESCO World Heritage list as amongst: " .. the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts."

In 1990, the local communities of Bucketty and Wollombi established the 'Convict Trail Project', aiming to restore, maintain and promote the road as a museum of convict engineering. Original sections of the road which are on view have provided valuable insight into early road construction techniques in the colony of New South Wales, and how English road-building technology of the time was imported and adapted. Prisoners from facilities managed by Corrective Services NSW have been involved with maintenance.

Dural was settled from the 1820s by timber-getters, farmers and orchardists.

The early settlers built their homes – slab huts or wattle-and-daub cottages – from the local timber. During the gold rushes, when labour was scarce, prices for sawn timber were high, and settlers in the district harvested the abundant timber and cut it in sawpits on their properties. After the timber was exhausted, grain crops of oats, wheat and barley were planted, but the land was most suited to citrus trees, and by the end of the nineteenth century the area had become an important fruit-growing district. Timber-getting and fruit growing remain the main primary industries of the area.

The first grant in the area was made to George Hall in 1879.

At an earlier stage, a local settler, James Roughley, had donated land to be used for the building of a church. A sandstone chapel was built on Old Northern Road circa 1846, with a vestry, apse and shingle roof, plus a bell turret on the western gable. A porch was added soon after. The chapel—known as St Jude's Church—is now listed on the Register of the National Estate.

St Jude's Anglican Church, Dural, built on land donated by James Roughley in 1846.

It is a rare sandstone church built in the English Norman style as one cell with no aisles and a curved apse.

James Roughley (1829-1908)

St Jude’s Anglican Church today

Dural Post Office opened on 1 August 1864.

In 1907, the New South Wales Department of Agriculture established a 40-acre (16-hectare) Orchard Experimental Farm on Galston Road at Dural. Here, research work and trials with fruit trees were carried out. Twenty-one boys, known as the Dreadnought Boys, were brought out from Great Britain to be trained at the farm with money originally raised to purchase a dreadnought battleship for Great Britain.

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About:

Dural is now a semi-rural area with some farmland and remnant forest. Land blocks average five acres (two hectares) and are popular as hobby farms.

According to the 2021 census, there were 7,900 residents in Dural. 64.1% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth were China 4.1%, England 4.0%, India 3.0%, South Africa 2.0% and Malaysia 1.6%.

There was a high level of home ownership in Dural, with 81.0% of people either owning their house outright or owning with a mortgage.

Between 1985 and 1987, Dural was the site for tapings of the television game show It's a Knockout shown nationally on the Ten Network and hosted by Billy J Smith and Fiona MacDonald. However, due to numerous complaints from local residents the show was cancelled in 1987.

Dural was also the setting for the home of the wealthy Hamilton family, at 631 Old Northern Road, in the soap opera Sons And Daughters during its 1981–1987 run.

A manor house in Dural, Le Chateau, was the primary filming location of reality television show Beauty and the Geek Australia: