Growing up on Elizabeth Farm
The Macarthur children of Elizabeth Farm had fields, gardens and muddy riverbanks to explore. They had a large farm house to run around with cool verandahs, eerie cellars and curious nooks and crannies.
...it’s tempting to imagine them exploring the creek, going right down to the waterfront, bringing back something they’d found to show their mother or father...
Unlike most kids growing up in Sydney in the early 1800s, the Macarthur kids wore good clothes, ate fresh food, had servants at their beck and call and, best of all, an education.
Elizabeth Farm is a classic single-story colonial farmhouse, huddled under a low shady roof, almost hidden inside a dense, rambling garden. Surrounded today by modern suburbia on the outskirts of busy Parramatta, the farm originally covered 600 acres of scrub, pastures, orchards and prime riverfront land. In this video Curator Scott Hill describes growing up at Elizabeth Farm and what made the Macarthurs different from their fellow colonial families. We also learn how special bonds forged during their early childhood years helped them through difficult times later on.
Many children today love visiting Elizabeth Farm because you can run in and out of the rooms, from the bedrooms to the main rooms, onto the verandahs and straight into the garden. Given the Macarthurs had seven kids, its hard to image where they all slept.
Published on
Gary Crockett
Former curator
It was the dog-eared world of Rouse Hill House, back in 1991, that inspired Gary Crockett to become a curator. Gary produced exhibitions on convict, immigration and legal history at the Hyde Park Barracks, studied spatial history at the Museum of Sydney, collaborated with artists and tenants at Susannah Place, architects and engineers at Elizabeth Farm, designers at Rose Seidler House, curated Surf City, an ode to Sydney surf culture, along with a string of video, audioguide and interactive museum projects.
Related
Convict Sydney
John Macarthur - Ambitious, volatile, self-confident
John Macarthur is well remembered as an ambitious and ruthless soldier who forged a powerful colonial farming dynasty
When masks were compulsory
When thinking about the impact of COVID-19, it’s timely to reflect on an earlier pandemic that affected every aspect of life, including at our places
The Maltese connection: the unexpected origins of Elizabeth Farm’s convict workers
The story of three men from Elizabeth Farm shows that theft was only one reason for transportation and that Britain was far from the only source of convicts sent to NSW
On This Day
12 Feb 1793 - John Macarthur granted land at Parramatta
On 12 February 1793 John Macarthur was granted 100 acres of land at Parramatta by Acting Governor Francis Grose. Macarthur was the first man to clear and cultivate 50 acres