Richmond Windsor Region

Distinguished and Famous people from Richmond Windsor Region

📜 Maria Lock

Maria Lock was born at Richmond Bottoms, daughter of Yarramundi of the Boorooberongal Dharug people. Educated at the Native Institution, she later used petitions to press claims for land and a secure home for her growing family. Married to convict carpenter Robert Lock in 1824, she persisted through official obstacles and eventually obtained land at Liverpool and Blacktown. She died at Windsor in 1878. Her story complicates colonial descriptions that treated Aboriginal people as disappearing: her descendants maintained family connections, while her written claims demonstrate purposeful negotiation within an unequal system. The Hawkesbury association is one of family origin as well as the closing chapter of her life.

🏘️ Lachlan Macquarie

Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s instructions of December 1810 directed surveyor James Meehan to lay out Windsor, Richmond, Pitt Town, Wilberforce and Castlereagh. The orders specified street widths, public buildings and even acceptable house types. These were concrete decisions about how colonial towns would function, rather than names placed on an otherwise finished map. Windsor and Richmond retain that association in their urban history. The planning also belonged to the expansion of British settlement on Dharug Country, where farms and towns developed amid conflict over land. Macquarie’s role is best understood through both the built legacy and the colonial authority that made those decisions possible.