North Ryde
North Ryde is a suburb located in the Northern Sydney region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. North Ryde is located 15 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde.
One of Australia's major business districts, North Ryde is home to many multi-national corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Honeywell. The suburb is the site of Macquarie University and its residents include those from the university academe and the research sector. The CSIRO also has a major site on Delhi Road in the Riverside Corporate Park.
North Ryde shares the postcode of 2113 with adjacent suburbs Macquarie Park and East Ryde. These suburbs were once part of North Ryde and many businesses and residences in these suburbs still advertise their address as being in North Ryde. Adjacent Macquarie University was issued with its own postcode, 2109, by Australia Post in the late 1980s.
History
The earliest reference to the area being known as North Ryde appears to be after the district's first public school changed its name from City View Public School to North Ryde Public School in 1879. North Ryde was mainly farming area, until in 1897, it was sold to a Catholic parish. North Ryde is an extension of the adjacent suburb of Ryde which was named after the 'Ryde Store', a business run by G.M. Pope. He adopted the name from his birthplace of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, in the UK. Ryde was the name used from the 1840s and adopted as the name of the municipality in 1870.Aboriginal culture
The whole area between the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers was originally populated by Indigenous Australians and known by its Aboriginal name Wallumatta. Contact with the first white settlement's bridgehead into Australia quickly devastated much of the population through epidemics of smallpox and other diseases. The Aboriginal name survives in a local reserve, the Wallumatta Nature Reserve, located at the corner of Twin and Cressy roads, North Ryde. Very few remnants of Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest still exist. The most substantial undisturbed area is the Wallumatta Nature Reserve in North Ryde, which is owned and managed by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service. This small and critically endangered reserve, also known as the Macquarie Hospital Bushland, is one of the last remnants of the remaining 0.5% of original and endangered turpentine-ironbark forests on Wianamatta shale soil in Sydney. See Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest.European settlement
is the third oldest settlement in Australia, after Sydney and Parramatta. The name 'Eastern Farms' was given to the district with the 10 initial land grants in 1792. This name remained in use for a few years before 'Kissing Point' became the common name. North Ryde was established in the mid 19th century as a farming district, in what was a heavily vegetated area, next to the already established district of Ryde. The Field of Mars Common was considered dangerous, as escaped convicts and bushrangers were known to frequent the area.Early European settlers
The earliest settler to receive a land grant in the area bordered by the Field of Mars Common and Bridge/Twin and Badajoz Roads that is now North Ryde was Jane Wood in 1800. Following land grants were to David Brown in 1802, William Kent Jnr in 1803, "Tudor Farm" being the largest land grant in the district, which included all the land between Lane Cove, Herring, Bridge and Waterloo roads, James Weavers and Michael Connor in 1804, and Thomas Granger in 1809.Amongst the earliest settlers was James Weavers, a farm labourer born in 1752, who was sentenced to death at 28 March 1787 Bury St Edmunds Assizes. His sentence was reduced to transportation for life and he arrived in the colony aboard the ship Surprize on 26 June 1790. He was granted 30 acres of land in what is now Putney. He married Mary Hutchinson in 1792 and they had four children. James Weavers and his descendants were part of a remarkable pioneering family whose members variously survived the hardships of harsh conditions, disease, infant mortality and the tragic loss of many of its members in an isolated settlement. James Weavers did well as a farmer and in 1803 he purchased a 60-acre farm and received a 100-acre grant of adjoining land in 1804. James Weavers is thought to have been killed by Aborigines on 3 April 1805 and although his burial was registered at St Philips Church, his descendants believe that he was buried on his own land. The earliest settlers to farm in the Putney district were often related by marriages and this included the Weavers, Wicks, Benson, Cox, Hicks and Heard families of North Ryde.
Henry Heard came to Sydney from Devonshire and acquired four acres of land on Twin Road and planted an orchard. He and his wife Mary Jane had nine children, four sons and five daughters born between 1859 and 1876. Apart from the first child, William, who was born and died in 1859 and registered in St Leonards, all the other children were registered in Ryde. Therefore, the growing Heard family must have come to the district just before 1860. He continued to acquire more acreage and expand his orchards and vineyards. After his death one of his sons obtained a further 24 acres, bounded on the north and north-east by Joseph Cox's property, on the south and south-east by Wicks Road, on the south-west by Twin Road. In addition to this orchard he also obtained 12 acres of bush land which was further cleared to expand the farm. The Heard's orchard was named the Model Farm. Two of Heard's cottages survive to this day, the main house at 505 Twin Road and semi-detached Orchard House and Heards Cottage on the corner of Cox's and Wicks Roads, North Ryde and is listed on Ryde Council's Heritage List.
Around 1868 Joseph Cox and his brother William, originally from Kent in England, purchased 21 acres of land in North Ryde for £1425. William left to pursue farming on the other side of the Parramatta River. Joseph, along with his wife persevered and named their homestead "Pomona". They had six children. With extensive orchards and vineyards, Joseph was also a skilled winemaker. Around 1880 Joseph built a three storey manor from locally quarried stone, and a private carriageway with entrance and exit to Cox's Road via ornate iron gates hinged on skillfully dressed stone pillars. From the upstairs verandah they had an excellent view of Sydney. "Pomona" was located near the North Ryde Public School on the opposite side of Cox's Road.
George Wicks was the Mayor of Ryde in 1876 and he and his wife Sarah Goulding had a total of 12 children. Henry William Watts served as an alderman on Ryde Council and was Mayor from 1886 to 1887. These descendants of James Weavers were orchardists with properties bordering the Field of Mars Common in North Ryde. They were among a few men and women who represented the sizeable proportion of Ryde's population who were small landholders based on family farms and who actively campaigned for a local school in what is now North Ryde.
Motorcycling
In 1928 the Chatswood Motorcycle Club built a course in the area now known as the Commandment Rock Picnic Area of Lane Cove National Park. The North Ryde circuit was an early version of off-road speedway. The first North Ryde meetings were held in May and October 1928. It was reported that the October meeting attracted 7000 spectators. The Commandment Rock course was closed and another circuit known as the North Ryde Speedway was developed on what is now part of North Ryde Golf Course, opposite from the present day School of Arts in Cox's Road. The track was located in a natural amphitheatre giving spectators an excellent view of the events. A typical meeting comprised 30 events of ten laps each. It closed in about 1935 when the golf course development began and the Chatswood Club merged with Willoughby Motor Cycle Club. One upcoming rider was Ray "Broadside" Taylor, who went on to become Australian Speedway Champion and an international speedway star of the 1930s and 1940s. His motorcycle was named "Daisy" after his wife. As a boy he moved with his family from Dubbo, to the Sydney suburb of West Ryde where he finished his education. His first dirt track race meeting was at North Ryde run by the Chatswood Motorcycle Club where he won five of the six races entered.World War II
During World War II, a substantial army base, the 3rd Australian Ordnance Army Vehicle Park was located in North Ryde, bounded by Epping, Wicks, Cox's and Blenheim Roads. Substantial numbers of Jeeps, tanks, transports, emergency motorcycles, generator sets and searchlights, and various military vehicles and equipment were located there, along with heavy transport workshops, personnel and barracks.Post-World War II
North Ryde remained rural until after World War II, with a small population whose main activity up until that time was farming. Orchards, market gardens, vineyards and poultry predominated the landscape. In the 1950s and 1960s, the State Government purchased and subdivided much of the land for war service homes and public housing. During the postwar years the character of the district underwent a major change, from rural to suburban residential. The rapid development of North Ryde saw many of the older dwellings and buildings demolished.After the war, the huts previously used by the army on the southern side of Blenheim Road were utilised as a migrant hostel and for Australian families in urgent need of accommodation due to the acute housing shortage.
A large pig farm was located at the northern end of Wicks Road and was operational until the late 1960s.
An outdoor theatre had operated in Khartoum Road for many years showing silent and then "talkie" movies and was known locally as "the Shack". Located on the corner of what is now Khartoum Road and Waterloo Roads, the Khartoum Theatre was an open-air theatre which opened on 29th January 1938, with the final movie shown in 1966 when it closed with Marlon Brando in “The Wild One”. It had always been a popular haunt with locals and motorcyclists alike.
In 1956, the North Ryde Skyline Drive-In Theatre was opened on the southern corner of Waterloo and Lane Cove Roads, on land that was previously an orange orchard. It had capacity for 639 cars, a fully equipped restaurant with facilities which also housed the projection booths, and a large children's playground was located under the huge screen. It showed its final movies, Rocky IV and Conan The Destroyer, on 5 February 1986.