Emu Heights, New South Wales

Emu Heights is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Emu Heights is located 58 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Penrith.

Emu Heights sits on the land of the Dharug people, who are the traditional owners of the area.

Sitting on the Blue Mountains escarpment and on the western side of the Nepean river, the suburb is just outside the Sydney metropolitan area.^[2] It is bounded to the east by the Nepean River and to the west by Blue Mountains local government area.

History

The Dharug people inhabited the land now known as Emu Heights and are the traditional owners of the land.

Emu Heights was established by George Innes, a free settler from Bathurst who obtained 400 acres (1.6 km²) in 1831, near McCann's Island and named it Emu Heights. However, the name "Emu Heights" wasn't officially assigned to the neighbourhood until early 1976.^[3]

Schools

Emu Heights Public School was founded in 1972. The school had only eighty seven pupils and three teachers, but now has over three hundred students enrolled.^[4] The school's teaching revolves around seven Key Learning Areas, English, Mathematics, Science, ICT, Human society and its environment, the Creative Arts and Personal Health and Social Development.

Parks

Clissold Park is host to great diversity of Australia's fauna and flora and features basketball, netball and children's playground facilities. The park does not have formal field sporting facilities but is more than large enough for such and regularly used by the close knit people of Emu Heights for community events. There is a peaceful stream that flows down from the mountain escarpment, though this stream has been recorded to flood the whole park and north along Wedmore Rd in major storms. (The stream was diverted east by housing developers in the 1980s who followed a farmers drainage channel rather that the original flow north beside Wedmore Rd to the Nepean river).

A larger unnamed parkland also exists at the north end of Emu Heights, between the suburb and the Nepean River, giving wide access to the river. Sporting fields and golf facilities are being considered for this parkland. Fishing and canoeing are popular as this section of the river is not used by power boats. The section of river accessible from Emu heights is home to a large variety of native and migratory waterbirds. In the early 1960s, the native egg laying mammal the platypus could still be found in this section of the river but has since become extinct.

Population

According to the 2011 census, there were 3,362 residents in Emu Heights. The majority of people (83%) were born in Australia and the most common ancestries were Australian 33.4%, English 30.1%, Irish 8.1%, Scottish 7.2% and German 2.9%. Almost all private dwellings were separate houses (97.5%) and the majority of residents (54.1%) were paying off their home with a mortgage.^[1]

References

Coordinates: 33°44′07″S 150°39′01″E / 33.73521°S 150.65030°E / -33.73521; 150.65030