Nepean River - History: European Settlement

History: European Settlement

When the British colony was established at Sydney in 1788, the Royal Navy men in charge of the settlement went exploring by boat. They discovered the mouth of the Hawkesbury River about 50 kilometers north of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) and followed the river upstream, naming it after Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool, who at that time was titled Baron Hawkesbury.

Meanwhile, Watkin Tench of the Royal Marines set off to walk inland, west of Sydney. About 60 kilometers inland, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, he discovered a large river which he named Nepean after a different British politician, Evan Nepean. It took the Navy and the Army about three years to realise they had discovered the same river and given it two different names.

During the 1820s, the Nepean district's most famous early settler, the landowner and physician Sir John Jamison (1776–1844), erected a magnificent Georgian house on the model estate which he had established on a rise overlooking the river, not far from the present-day City of Penrith. Sadly, Regentville House burned down in the 1860s but Sir John's reputation remains as one of early Australia's most important political and agricultural pioneers.