Colonial Kids Down at the Dairy

Colonial Kids Down at the Dairy                                                                                           Explore the surviving Dairy Cottage of Governor Macquarie, that was purchased by him from emancipated convict, George Salter in 1813.

Join in this FREE family day where you can get right into the fun of colonial times. Explore the old Governors’ Dairy building and see the convict made dairy cool room. Food is what Governor Macquarie had in mind when he converted emancipist George Salter’s cottage into a milk processing centre. Find out about the clever ways that food was processed and preserved in Parramatta’s hot climate, before refrigeration was invented!

Hear about George Salter – smuggler, convicted for murder and transported for seven years.

One of Sydney’s earliest buildings (c.1796) reveals oddities and secrets such as a sunken milk room, brick nogging, and even a 1930’s South Pacific- inspired wall mural.

Dating back to 1796 the Dairy Cottage has watched over two hundred years of change in Parramatta Park. Built on land granted to George Salter on expiry of his sentence, at a time when farmland around the Parramatta River was the bread basket of the struggling colony, the cottage was home to farm workers. In 1813 Governor Macquarie purchased Salter’s grant and added it to his domain, extended the cottage and housed his dairy workers here. These early Parramattans were reported to indulge in riotous behaviour and even harbour bushrangers on occasion.

Later the Governor’s Domain became the great people’s park of Parramatta, the cottage a residence for Rangers and their families and an additional cottage was built covering the sunken milk room of the old Governor’s Dairy. This feature was later uncovered intact by archaeologists in 1993 after tonnes of ash and soil were removed.

The cottages were reused as a works depot and this resulted in the preservation of old the building and features such as brick-nogging wall construction, brick barrel drains, 19^th century wallpapers and a 1930’s South Pacific- inspired watercolour mural painted by Horace J. Melville in the 1930s for Ranger Simm.