The Third Government Farm is a heritage-listed garden at Gilbert Road, near Old Northern Road, Castle Hill, The Hills Shire, New South Wales, Australia. It was built during 1801. It is also known as Castle Hill Heritage Park; Third Government Farm (former); Castle Hill Settlement Site; Old Government Farm Site; Castle Hill Convict Farm; Castle Hill Historic Site. The property is owned by The Hills Shire Council (Local Government). It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 22 December 2000.
History
Castle Hill Heritage Park is significant principally for its association with the participants in the Castle Hill convict rebellion, also known as the Second Battle of Vinegar Hill.
The Second Battle of Vinegar Hill holds a seminal, but only relatively recently recognised, place in Australian ethnic, religious and political history. The Second Battle of Vinegar Hill is the only recorded armed battle between Europeans in Australia, other than the Eureka Stockade, although there were bigger battles between Europeans and indigenous Australians up until the 1930s. The Second Battle of Vinegar Hill involved approximately 300 mainly Irish insurgents, most of whom had been transported for sedition, political activism and uprisings in Ireland, and of whom fifteen were shot, nine hanged, nine flogged (200-500 lashes each), and fifty sent in chains to Coal River (later renamed Newcastle) for their part in the uprising. The insurgents battled with the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps and the militia.
The reasons for the uprising remain unclear. "Death or Liberty" was the catchphrase used by the insurgents during the Rebellion and the popular view has been that the uprising was a bid for freedom in response to cruel punishments and food shortages. This, however, is perhaps too narrow and simplistic a view given the demographics of the convict population. It is likely that the uprising was a largely political act of organised revolution by the largely Irish National convict population who did not recognise English authority in Ireland, and had been transported for their involvement in political uprisings in the Old Country. The view that to the Irish Defenders and the Society of the United Irishmen, all English authority was illegitimate, unjust and their natural state was to resist it, both at home and in the colonies, is a plausible, wider view of events.
It is still not certain why the uprising took place. There are few official and public records on this point dating to the Rebellion, due to age and circumstance and probably because of the potential embarrassment to Governor King whose policy to concentrate Irish political prisoners in a single remote location could have been seen by London and the Colonial Secretary as naive (which it almost certainly was). Those participants who were not executed as a deterrent were separated and dispersed after the Rebellion to ensure such group action was unlikely ever to again occur. Their story has never been adequately told.
It is fascinating, however, that such an important episode in Colonial history has gone largely unrecognised and un-commemorated for so long. This may relate to political and religious trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.