Hunters Hill

Hunters Hill is a suburb of the lower north shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

Hunters Hillis a suburb of the lower north shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Hunters Hill is located 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) north-west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the Municipality of Hunter's Hill.

Hunters Hill is situated on a small peninsula that separates the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers. It can be reached by bus or by ferry.

The area's Aboriginal name is 'Mookaboola' or 'Moocooboola', which means meeting of waters.

Hunters Hill was named after John Hunter, the second Governor of New South Wales, who was in office between 1795 and 1800.The area that is now Hunters Hill was settled in 1835. One of the earliest settlers was Mary Reibey, the first female retailer in Sydney. She built a cottage—later known as Fig Tree House—on land that fronted the Lane Cove River; Reiby Street is named after her. During the 1840s, bushrangers and convicts who had escaped from the penal settlement on Cockatoo Island would take refuge in Hunters Hill.

Many of the suburb's early houses were built from the local sandstone. A number were built by Frenchman Didier Numa Joubert (1816–1881), who bought 200 acres (81 ha) of land from Mary Reiby from 1847 and used seventy stonemasons from Italy to construct solid artistic houses. Hunters Hill was proclaimed as a municipality on 5 January 1861. The first Gladesville Bridge constructed in 1881 linked the area to Drummoyne and the southern side of the Parramatta River.

In the early 20th century, there was an industrial area in Hunters Hill. One of the industries was a radium and uranium refinery operating from 1911 to 1915. The concentrated ore was transported over 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) from Radium Hill in South Australia, 100 km west of Broken Hill. At the time, uranium was considered a byproduct, but very small quantities of radium (which had been discovered in 1898) were very valuable. The refinery could produce about 5 milligrammes of radium bromide from a ton of ore, worth£20 per milligramme in 1912. The area is now residential, Nelson Parade, and demands to remove it saw a plan developed to transport it to an old quarry area besides Badgerys Creek that was licensed to receive low level radioactive waste; however all such planning ceased as Badgerys Creek International Airport was decided upon to proceed.

There is a private hospital in Alexandra Street and in High Street, a Jewish nursing home and synagogue named the Sir Moses Montefiore Home. The historic Hunters Hill Town Hall is located in Alexandra Street, close to the historic post office.The Great North Walk, a walking trail from Sydney to Newcastle, passes through Boronia Park; a large waterfront parkland reserve which contains Aboriginal drawings thought to date back to before the start of the colony.