Croydon is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located west of the Sydney central business district. Croydon is split between the two local government areas of Municipality of Burwood and the Inner West Council.
The suburb is nestled between the commercial centres of Ashfield and Burwood. It is bounded by Parramatta Road to the north, Iron Cove Creek to the east, Arthur Street to the south and a number of different streets to the west. To the north are Kings and Canada Bays on the closest reach of the Parramatta River, to the northwest is Concord Hospital and the Olympic Games complex at Homebush Bay. To the south is Canterbury Racecourse. The suburb shares its name with Croydon, a large district and borough in the south of London in the United Kingdom.
The traditional owners of the land on which Croydon is situated are the Wangal people of the Eora nation.
History
Aboriginal anthropology
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the area now known as Croydon was part of the land which the Wangal people lived. Their focus of tribal land was believed to be centred on Concord and stretched east to the swampland of Long Cove Creek. The land was heavily wooded at the time with tall eucalypts, blackbutts and turpentines covering the higher ground and mangroves, swamp oaks and swamp mahoganies in the lower swampy ground of Iron Cove Creek. The diet of the Wangal was primarily fish so they spent most of their time living near the shores of the Parramatta River and fishing in canoes. The land away from the river shores provided fruits, berries and edible plants as well as possums and kangaroos, which were killed both for food and their skins.
The arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and the start of modern Australia had, as one could expect, an influence on the people living in the area. One of their leaders, Bennelong, befriended the first governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, and was taken by him to England.
After establishing the colony at Sydney Cove in early 1788, a second settlement was established at Rose Hill (now called Parramatta) later that same year to establish farms to feed the people. Within a year or so, a rough land route had been established between the two settlements, traversing through the territory of the Cadigal, Wangal and Burramattagal people. This rough track later became the main artery of the expanding Greater Sydney and, as the northern boundary of what is now Croydon, influenced modern settlement in the area.
Early British settlement
Governor Phillip showed great reluctance to grant large amounts of land to his colonists, restricting land grants to the towns and people actively planning to farm the land. After his return to England in 1792, acting governor Major Francis Grose and his successor Captain William Paterson pursued the opposite policy granting large swathes of land to their friends prior to the arrival of the second official governor John Hunter in 1795.
The first land grant in the Croydon area was to Captain John Townson in April 1793 who received on Parramatta Road stretching west from Iron Cove Creek and south to what is now Queen Street. Further grants were made in 1794 to: Private J Eades (25 acres on Parramatta Road to the west of Townson's holding); James Brackenrig (30 acres on the other side of Eades's land); Augustus Alt, the first surveyor-general of NSW, (100 acres stretching south from Townson's land to roughly what is now Thomas Street); and Sarah Nelson (15 acres west of the southern corner of Alt's land in the area now known as Malvern Hill). Alt was the first to take up residence on his land, naming it 'Hermitage Farm'. However, his house was burnt down by a group of indigenous people (possibly led by Pemulwuy) in 1797 and he didn't return to Croydon, establishing himself in neighbouring Ashfield, and selling his property to John Palmer.