Scheyville National Park

About

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 920-hectare (2,300-acre) national park is situated approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of the Sydney central business district, northeast of Windsor, near the settlement of Scheyville. 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.

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.

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-years 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.

In 1804 an area of approximately 5,650 acres (22.9 km 2 ) 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 9,000 acres (36 km 2 ) in size, and extended from Maraylya to South Windsor.

In 1893 the government resumed 3,000 acres (12 km 2 ) 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.

Despite the paucity of the soils for agriculture, the government persisted with endeavours to assist the needy by putting them to work on the farm at Pitt Town and in 1896 a Casual Labour Farm was established on the site of the Cooperative Farm. Here the poor and unemployed worked collecting firewood or tending pigs, for a small wage, for a limited term of three or four months. In 1905, dairy cattle were added to the farm's livestock. A scheme was introduced to train young men in the skills of raising livestock and farming. The Pitt Town Village Settlement and later Casual Labour Farm. tell a resonant and significant story in the history of NSW as they were radical and often controversial government responses to social problems experienced by families and individuals in the economic depression of the 1890s. As such, they were a significant early example of government intervention in the welfare of its constituents.

The Farm Training for Australian Boys scheme ran until 1910 when under the vision and management of William Schey, Director of Labour and Industry in the first years of Federation, the farm was established as a training farm for young British Migrants who arrived in Australia under the Dreadnought scheme. The scheme was a State government incentive and offered the boys 13 months of training in all aspects of farming, dairying, livestock care, care and use of farm equipment orcharding and cropping. After the training, the boys were placed with a NSW farmer. Many of the existing facilities were retained to accommodate the boys and facilitate the training and farming activities although Schey oversaw the construction of a number of new buildings. his was the first of several youth migration schemes in Australia established with the sole focus of bringing youth to Australia for training in areas of skills shortage such as agriculture and domestic work. Later schemes included the Fairbridge Farm scheme, the Barwell Boys scheme and the Big Brother scheme.

The Dreadnought scheme at Scheyville ran from 1911 to 1915 when the outbreak of World War I saw a reduction in number of trainees at the farm from 800 in 1913 to 30 in 1915.

By this time the agriculture sector, like other sectors of the workforce in NSW was experiencing a serve lack of skilled workers due to the enlistment of many men in the armed forces and their engagement in active service in the European theatre of war. The government decided to call on the women of Australia to fill the skills shortage. To address these problems in the agricultural sector the facilities and training course at Scheyville were opened to the women of NSW in 1915. While there was a significant increase in women entering the workforce between 1914 and 1918 (from 24% to 34%) these were mainly into areas women traditionally worked in, clothing, footwear, food industries with some increases in clerical, retail and teaching. This resistance to stretching gender roles and taking on work outside the traditional areas was reflected in the noticeable lack of interest among NSW women in taking up the offer of training in agricultural skills at Scheyville. Between 1915 and 1917 when the incentive was abandoned, about 25 women had trained at Scheyville.

At the close of the war when the thousands of soldiers returned home many found that there were no longer jobs for them. In recognition of their service to the nation and to give them a helping hand the Commonwealth and State governments joined forces to put in place a soldier settlement scheme whereby, on application, returning soldiers were allocated by or leased land from the State Government and financially assisted to establish farms by the Commonwealth government. Many of the returnees had no previous farming experience and so during 1917 and 1918, the Government Agricultural Training Farm at Scheyville was opened to returned soldiers who received basic agricultural training there.

In 1919, the Dreadnought training scheme restarted and it continued to run up until 1929. The last five years of the scheme were funded jointly by the Commonwealth and State governments and also the British government.

In 1928 plans were drawn up by the Government Architect's Office for a handsome set of buildings in the Georgian Revival and Inter-War Mediterranean style. These building formed the "Quadrangle Precinct" and comprised an administrative block, kitchen dining room and two dormitories.

While the Scheme was officially suspended in 1929 due to the looming economic crisis of the Great Depression, the farm continued to train both Australian and Immigrant boys through the 1930s when it was known as the Government Training Farm. During the 1930s many changes were made to the farm facilities including the construction of a double silo, and a new dairy and tank base.

With the outbreak of World War II, the farm was commandeered by the military. Initially, it was intended to use the farm for artillery and anti-tank warfare training but little record of this is available. In early 1942 the Scheyville Dreadnought Farm became the home of the newly formed 73rd Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Company.

The new and highly specialised force was an essential element in the defence of Australia particularly after the Japanese surprise air Attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The 73rd Company used the land at Scheyville to carry out basic training while waiting for its ranks to fill.