* Location
Prospect is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Prospect is located 32 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Blacktown and is part of the Outer Sydney region.
* History
One of the oldest suburbs in Sydney, Prospect takes its name from the prominent nearby landmark of Prospect Hill – from the top of which people could get a prospect of (see a great distance) the surrounding countryside. Initially a settlement for emancipated convicts, it later became a village.
Prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, Prospect was inhabited by different groups of the Darug people including the Warmuli. The Aboriginals there were of the woods culture. As European settlement expanded, the aboriginal people’s ability to pursue their traditional lifestyle, which was already severely limited, disappeared. Prospect Hill had been the frontier, which was the first, and perhaps only, area where large scale organised resistance by aboriginal people took place.
Lieutenant Watkin Tench most likely named Prospect Hill in April 1790. In July 1791, thirteen grants of land at Prospect were made to emancipated convicts. In January 1794 David Collins reported that the Prospect Hill farmers were the most productive in the colony.
Prospect became the boundary between colonists and indigenous Australians. Hostility grew until by 1797, where a state of guerrilla warfare existed between indigenous people and the settler communities at Prospect and Parramatta. The aboriginal people were led by their leader, Pemulwuy, a member of the Bidjigal tribe who occupied the land. Pemulwuy was the main leader of raids against the colony in the 1790s. In 1797 the war escalated; his guerrillas started regular raids on settlements in the Parramatta and Prospect Hill areas. British military expeditions failed to locate and capture Pemulwuy.
Shortly after 1808, William Lawson was appointed aide-de-camp to George Johnston, was granted 500 acres (2.0 km2) at Prospect and built a large house there, which he named Veteran Hall. In the 1880s most of the property was submerged in what is now Prospect reservoir.
On 30 January 2004 the eastern part of Prospect became a new suburb called Pemulwuy containing the new housing estates of Lakeside and Nelson’s Ridge and the industrial area within the oval-shaped ridge of Prospect Hill. So most of Prospect Hill is no longer within the suburb of Prospect.
Since colonisation, settlers cleared larger areas of land to raise livestock, build churches, inns, schools, shops and a large reservoir. The quarrying of blue metal was abundant in the area. Naturalist Charles Darwin visited Prospect in January 1836, to observe the geology.
* Prospect Timeline by Blacktown City Libraries – January 2023
Places of Interest
