ABSTRACT
The existence of the New South Wales township of Windsor is tied to agricultural demands of the first European coloniz ers in Australia. In 1789, when the sandy soil of Sydney town-the first British penal settlement in the South Pa cific-was found to be unsuitable for large-scale agriculture, Captain Arthur Phillip, first governor of New South Wales, led a small exploratory party north into Broken Bay in search of good farming land. What Phillip found was a river formed by the junction of two other streams (the Nepean and Groce Rivers), flowing eighty-seven miles north-northeast across a fertile coastal plain and parallel to the coast. Phillip named the river after Baron Hawkesbury, president of the Council of Trade and Plantations in England. In 1794, Phillip's succes sor, Lieutenant Governor Francis Groce, sent twenty-two settlers to land that Phillip had located on the Hawkesbury and recommended for farming. This settlement was called Green Hills and became the granary of the colony, producing barley, wheat, and maize.
