Places to visit in and around Parramatta Park NSW

Situated on the traditional lands of the Burramatta Dharug in Parramatta Park, Old Government House is the oldest surviving public building in Australia. It is one of 11 sites that make up the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage sites that tell the story of exile and how a new nation was formed from hardship, inequality and adversity.

Built by convicts, Old Government House was an early decision-making centre of the colony and served as the country residence for the first 10 governors of Australia. It replaced a small timber cottage built for Governor Phillip in 1790 and was enlarged to its present form in 1850.

Today, you can visit this elegant Georgian house, now a museum operated by the National Trust of Australia (NSW) while visiting Parramatta Park, which is free to explore.  Entry fees are: National Trust Members – FREE, Adult - $15, *Concession/child - $12, Family - $42, Children under 5 years – FREE (* Concession applies for full-time students, seniors, pensioners and children aged 5-15 years.). Booking fees apply.

When you explore the building’s wings, colonnades and portico you can see how it might once have been a focal point for colonial society and a direct translation of the English built form to an Australian landscape.

Parramatta’s beautiful historic Wistaria Gardens is part of Parramatta Park and is being restored to its former glory by Greater Sydney Parklands.

Wistaria Gardens originally formed part of the Cumberland Hospital precinct. It holds a special place in the nation’s heritage and is one of Sydney’s most intact surviving Edwardian Gardens.

The garden is highly valued by the community for its beautiful cultural heritage and as a tranquil haven on the edge of the bustling Parramatta CBD. In spring - when its colourful floral display is at its finest - the picturesque garden is a popular tourist attraction for the city.

Parramatta River has wound through this landscape for thousands of years, transforming the landscape to create Sydney Harbour and its tributaries within an ancient drowned river valley.

One of the best places to view this ancient waterway is from The Crescent, a natural amphitheatre formed by a small billabong on the bank of the river. This area was inhabited by Aboriginal people dating back thousands of generations, making it one of the earliest cultural sites in the Sydney Basin.

The Crescent was an attractive area for the early colonialists, who admired its dramatic formation above the river. Today it offers a vantage point from which to view the Old Kings School, Brislington House and the spires of St Patrick’s and St John’s cathedrals – as well as the river.

As a spectacular outdoor amphitheatre, you might find yourself enjoying the many concerts and major events throughout the year, such as Sydney Festival’s Symphony Under the Stars.

The two-roomed Dairy Cottage was constructed between 1796 and 1805, making it one of the oldest surviving, intact cottages in Australia. It was later converted to a dairy, with a pavilion on either side, one of which still houses a cellar beneath the Rangers Cottage (built around 1870).

Known as the Dairy Precinct, the Dairy Cottage and the Rangers Cottage form part of Parramatta Park’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed area. It is rare to find such an intact building as the Dairy Cottage, which has remained substantially unchanged since 1820, and it gives you an opportunity to understand the techniques and materials used by early European settlers.

You can explore the Dairy Precinct grounds and gardens for free, or take a paid guided tour with PHIVE, Programming and Venue Servicesto delve deeper into Australia’s multi-layered colonial history.

Parramatta Observatory was the first site of the extensive cataloguing of southern skies in the European astronomical scientific tradition. It was built in 1822 and included transit stones – which originally supported a transit telescope – as the meridian mark for explorer Thomas Mitchell’s first trigonometric survey of Australia in 1828.

The observatory building fell into ruin and was demolished in 1848, with only the transit stones remaining. The adjacent stone obelisk, placed in 1880, indicates the position of the transit telescope, although its true location is a subject of debate.

You’ll find the obelisk and transit stones between Railway Parade and Governor Macquarie’s Carriage Drive.

The 6 gatehouses at Parramatta Park’s entrances – on George Street, Ross Street, Park Road, Macquarie Street, Great Western Highway at Mays Hill and Queens Road – date from the 1870s.

The Tudor-style George Street Gatehouse and the Gothic-style Macquarie Street Gatehouse are the grand entrances to Parramatta Park. The George Street Gatehouse was built on the site of Governor Macquarie’s small stone lodge in 1885 and is now a local landmark.

The gatehouses reference British culture and are examples of the enhancement and utility of 19th century design. Today, these grand entrances have become a place for you to visit. The pop-up café - Good George by Circa offers takeaway food and drinks from the George Street Gatehouse.

Take a walk through the Burramatta Landscape Trail, along the eastern bank of Domain Creek in Parramatta Park.

You’ll see thousands of years of traditional Darug/Dharug land management and seed collection practices in action thanks to an Aboriginal cultural planting program that restored the trail.

Use the new interpretative signage on the trail to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of this land and the connection between flora and fauna that for centuries provided Aboriginal people with food, medicine, resources and knowledge. By sharing stories about how to care for Nura, traditional knowledge is revitalised and shared.

Some of the restoration activities included a day of planting using wooden dibblers (sticks) to make small planting holes and avoid damage to the archaeological subsurface layer beneath the soil. Aboriginal volunteers planted hundreds of Midyini (yam daisies), chocolate lilies and vanilla lilies - a staple part of the Darug/Dharug diet across the Cumberland Plain.

Paperbark Playground is a new, inclusive playground in the historic Gardens Precinct near the George Street Gatehouse. Ideal for children and toddlers, the playground features the latest in innovative playground equipment as well as traditional favourites like swings and a carousel. This can all be enjoyed by kids with varied mobility, including wheelchair users.

Discover the centrepiece – the 'explorer dome', a huge maze made of nets, ropes, ladders and tubes for older children to climb through and balance on. Softfall pavements cover the playground floor and there’s plenty of seats for parents and carers.

You’ll also get to learn more about the park’s heritage, as the playground sits within the World Heritage-listed area of the park and near the sites where Aboriginal artefacts were recorded dating back almost 40,000 years.

Kids can take shelter in geometric hut structures that take the form of early convict cottages, neutral colours are sympathetic to the surroundings and people of all ages and abilities are encouraged to enjoy the space, through unobtrusive structures with simple forms and materials.

Discover the interactive and fun artworks, including the ‘love tokens’ that emulate messages and stories from convicts, simple convict tools and artwork panels. And all visitors will be comfortable with seating under trees, views over the playspace from a central deck area, bubblers, bicycle parking, and a nearby café.

The Grey-headed Flying-fox is one of the world’s largest bats, and its breeding camp located on the banks of Parramatta River in the northern section of Parramatta Park. It is the only threatened animal species recorded within Parramatta Park, and was noted as far back as 1798.

The Flying-fox is considered a ‘keystone species’ vital for the long-term health of plants, particularly gum trees, that depend on these bats for long-distance pollination and seed dispersal. The camp is protected by a thick, mature bushland canopy on the banks of the river, giving the animals easy access to water and a clear path to fly in and out when foraging for food at night.

Flying-fox numbers in Parramatta Park can fluctuate between seasons as they migrate between camps. The number of bats in the park is typically around 10,000 but this figure can alter by up to 30%.

Little Coogee, on the banks of the Parramatta River, was a swimming and picnic spot as far back as the 1880s. With change rooms for men and women on opposite banks of the river, and a life guard, it was a popular place to while away a sunny summer’s day.

The inaugural lifesaving carnival in Parramatta Park was held in this spot in 1912 by members of the Coogee Life Saving Club, which is how Little Coogee got its name. However, with pollution in the river and the opening of the Parramatta and District War Memorial Swimming Pool in 1959 right next to the Park its popularity faded.

Today, it’s a pleasant spot for a walk by the river – access it from Button’s Bridge. The café Misc. is an exciting new food and beverage offering for the park, where visitors can enjoy an incredible Mediterranean inspired menu for breakfast, lunch or afternoon drinks.

The Boer War Memorial was erected in 1904. It’s one of comparatively few such memorials and is important because the first Australian troops to arrive in Africa in 1899 came from the Lancer Barracks in Parramatta.

The 100 Lancers from the nearby districts who took part in the Boer War were representing Australia, as distinct to Britain, in what was the nation’s first overseas military engagement.

Visit the memorial to see its 4 Doric columns and entablature (the architrave, frieze, and cornice) blocks recycled from the Parramatta Courthouse built in 1837. The gun placed on top was purchased by NSW in 1856 as part of the defence of Port Jackson.

You’ll find the memorial in a prominent position on the ridgeline, where it serves as a landmark when viewed from outside the Park boundaries.