This is a map of the land grants overlayed over a modern roadmap for Clarendon, Sydney. To the left of the map is Richmond and to the right, over Rickaby's Creek is Windsor. The lower picture shows the area that the Racecourse and Easter Show grounds are on. The orange highlighted area is the modern day RAAF base Richmond. The first land grant was in 1793, to James Ruse and 11 others along South Creek, so the grants to Ezzy, Cox and Hobby were later than that. Before 1793 and after European settlement of the Hawkesbury District, the area between Rickaby's Creek and Richmond was Ham Common. An idea borrowed from England, meaning a common ground for the property deficient members of society to graze their animals. If you drive up Windsor Road to Richmond ( the road on the Southern Border of the airbase ) there is a strip of public land about 50 metres wide and several kilometres long still called Ham Common. There are probably still laws in the local Parish/Shire to graze your animals there.
Derek Roylance in "Air Base Richmond" that Ezzy was granted his land in 1804 and that the modern airbase straddles the land grants of William Nash, Richard Olbright and Thomas Croft. Roylance writes that;
"In March 1912 one of Australia's early, and lesser known, aviation pioneers, a Parramatta NSW Dentist named William Ewart Hart, let it be known that he had obtained part of Richmond known as Ham Common for an airfield. Hart claimed the area was, 'the finest site in Australia for an aviation ground'
This area was part of the original grant of land to William Ezzy and is now part of the RAAF Base."
From the map above it would appear that the original hangar was built in the area of Ham Common to the west of Ezzy's land grant. When was Ezzy's land absorbed into the NSW State Aviation School. It looks liek Ham Common was the area Hart was given. Did he have to pay for it?, if so it may be the first instance of corporate welfare for the civil aviation industry in Australia ;)
cam
27 August 2001, 11:18 AM
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