The Scheyville National Park () is a protected national park that is located in the northwestern suburbs of Sydney in New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The national park is situated approximately northwest of the Sydney central business district, northeast of , near the settlement of . Longneck Lagoon lies in the northern section of the park. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 9 April 2010.
Overview
The cultural sites of Scheyville reflect many major themes in Australia's development since European settlement. Beginning in 1804, the area was set aside as a public common for the people of the district. The Pitt Town Cooperative Labour Settlement was established in 1893, followed by a Casual Labour Farm where unemployed men could live while finding other work.
William Frances Schey, MP for Redfern and Darlington, helped this tradition of experimental farming continue in the form of the Government Agricultural Training Farm. The training scheme was a program to promote and assist the migration of British Youths willing to become farm workers.
After the outbreak of World War II the training farm was taken over the Commonwealth with the 73rd Australian Anti Aircraft Search Light Company and the RAAF 244 1ST Parachute Battalion being stationed there. During the post-war immigration wave of the 1950s the lands and buildings at Scheyville became the starting point for thousands of immigrants seeking a new life in Australia.
From 1965 to 1973 Scheyville became the home of the Officer Training Unit. An intense six-month course designed to turn out officers capable of leading a platoon in Vietnam was offered to National Servicemen. After years of neglect and many development proposals for the land, Scheyville was finally gazetted as a national park in early 1996.
History
Aboriginal occupation
The land now known as Scheyville National Park and Pitt Town Nature Reserve was originally Dharug land. The Cattai clan of the Dharug people inhabited the area around Cattai Creek and Pitt Town at least 30,000-year ago. The area along the Hawkesbury Rivers and its tributaries provided fertile alluvial soils sustaining consistent supplies of food for the local Aboriginal people from the fish and wildlife stock and edible vegetation.
On two occasions, one in 1789 and the other 1791, the earliest contact with the Dharug of the Hawkesbury area was made by Governor Phillip and his party. By 1794 the first European settlers had established themselves in the area, carving out farms on the same rich soils that had sustained the Aboriginal population for thousands of years. First interactions between the Dharug and European settlers were cordial, but soon deteriorated as land was cleared for farming, trees were cut down for fuel and firewood, and the Dharug were denied access to their traditional hunting, fishing and gathering areas along the Hawkesbury River and other watercourses by European settlers.
As settlement in the area continued and spread further inland along the river, the local Aboriginal population began to diminish. This was due to a number of reasons most significantly, mortality from introduced diseases and migration of the Dharug out of the area because of the disruption to traditional lifestyle and competition for natural resources. This pattern continued and by 1851 it was reported that there were no Aboriginal people living in the Pitt Town area.
Pitt Town village settlement
In 1804 an area of approximately was set aside as a grazing common for the local settlers. This area originally called the Nelson Common finally became known as the Pitt Town Common. By 1889 the Common had increased to in size, and extended from Maraylya to South Windsor.
In 1893 the government resumed of the Pitt Town Common in order to establish an experimental agricultural settlement. It was declared the Pitt Town Village Settlement, operating as a cooperative farm, established to allow the unemployed and their families to make a living during the economic depression of the 1890s. Each family was expected to work the common land, clear and tend their own small allotment and contribute to the construction of community facilities in exchange for a set ration of food. By 1896 the settlement had failed due to the difficulties of farming the country.