Welcome to the Paterson River website, focused on the early history of the Paterson district. To get a feel for the site you could start with:

• an overview of settlement from 1812-1821
• the site of first settlement: Old Banks
• an overview of Aboriginal history of the area
• an overview of settlement from 1822
• the start of Paterson township

Paterson heritage walk 

Paterson's annual heritage walk is coming up on 14 March 2010. Meet at the museum at 1.00pm. This is a great opportunity to learn about Paterson's history from Cameron Archer who is an experienced local historian and president of Paterson Historical Society.

More newspapers on-line

The Sydney Gazette 1803-1842 has been on-line for quite a while now and is a great source of information on early Paterson history. Just before Christmas 2009 the Sydney Herald 1831-1842 went on-line. During 2010 the National Library plans to add the Maitland Mercury 1856-1893 (earlier issues are already on-line), the Australian 1824-1828 and the Sydney Monitor 1824-1841. All the text is fully searchable.

New book on Paterson's history

'Herman Montague Rucker Rupp—The Orchid Man of Paterson' by Val Anderson, 56 pages. This new book reveals the life of the Rev. Rupp and his passion for identifying and recording native orchards in the Paterson area. This study took place while he was Rector of St Paul's Church of England at Paterson from 1924 to 1930. The book contains interesting snapshots of the history of the Church of England in the Paterson Valley. It also records the more recent efforts of locals to retrace Rupp's steps, to find, identify and photograph the orchids he found six decades ago. Available from Paterson Historical Society .

Macquarie's bicentennary

Lachlan Macquarie took office as governor of New South Wales on 1 January 1810 and the early European settlement of Paterson is directly linked to his governorship. Macquarie gave permission for the first four settlers to take up land on the Paterson River at Old Banks in 1812. Nearly all of Paterson's inhabitants from 1812 to 1821 settled there with his permission, many of them convicts rewarded for good behaviour while at the penal settlement of Newcastle where they had been sent by the courts for re-offending in Sydney. See overview of settlement at Patersons Plains 1812-1821, and Governor Macquarie's bicentenary.