Talk:Hill Top, New South Wales

Hill Top History

The Hill Top War Memorial Hall Committee wrote a short book on the history of Hill Top. As principal researcher and author, I can verify that the Hill Top district was actually discovered in 1792 by John Wilson, a Lancastrian first fleet convict who had 1 year of transportation to complete in the Sydney settlement. After he became a freeman, he went on explorations around the basin. Eventually, he was sent on an official exploration by the govenor with a diarist named John Price. Wilson (also known as Bunboee by the local Darawal aboriginies) discovered rock salt, the Lyrebird and the source of the Lachlan River, being the very first river discovered to run west (inland). The govenor and on advice from the English administration, blocked most of Wilson's southern explorations from the rest of the colony as they wanted to maintain the fallacy that the Sydney basin was 'landlocked' by mountain ranges. Wilson found no difficulties in walking as far as the Goulburn plains along a geological ramp formation from Camden to the Southern Highlands. Later, land grants to Macquarie prevented convicts from travelling further south. Significantly, the first crossing of the Blue Mountains was not by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, but by Wilson almost 18 years earlier. The official exploration of the Southern Highlands by Hume in 1814 and Oxley in 1816 was based on Wilson's earlier explorations. It was only in 1895, when Sir Joseph Bank's papers were read, that some of the story of Wilson's explorations became available to academics. Prior to that, Wilson was remembered in an early history of the colony by Samuel Bennet "The History of Australian Discovery and Colonization" (1865). The full story can be read in Chris Cunningham's "The Blue Mountains Rediscovered: Beyond the Myths of Early Australian Exploration" (Kangaroo Press 1996) A short precis of Wilson is available from The Hill Top War Memorial Management Committee in the volume entitled "Waratahs and Wombats: Hill Top - A Selective History 1792-2001" (2001)

Note:

• Hill Top was officially named as such in 1977 by the Geographical Naming Board.
• Jellore (A private village), was in existence since 1860, maybe earlier.
• Wilson Drive was previously known (pre 1920) as 'Government Road'
• Wilson was killed by being speared by one of his indigenous wives in the Jellore area in 1800. Htcs (talk) 03:55, 16 March 2011 (UTC)