The Eora and the first contact
The first people to live in the Hurstville area were Indigenous Australians, and it is not known when they first settled there. When the First Fleet arrived, the people living in the area belonged to the Eora, who were spread along the Georges River from Botany Bay to what is now Liverpool.
On 20 January 1788 the Eora and members of the First Fleet met in sustained contact for the first time. The meeting was at Lime Kiln Bay, on the Georges River, near Lugarno and Oatley, inside the boundaries of what is now the City of Hurstville. Governor Philip was exploring near Como, on the southern bank of the Georges River. King took a six-oared rowboat, with one other officer and three marines, heading for the highest ground they could make out on the north side, probably at Lugarno. The party came ashore at a spot they named Lance Point.
The first contact led to a small altercation: a spear was thrown and a shot was fired. Later that day the party took the boat up Lime Kiln Bay towards what is now Mortdale, and both men and women greeted them in a friendly way. The two groups shared food and drink, an occasion remembered as Australia's first picnic. The British sailors then returned to their ship at Botany Bay.
Land grants and Gannon's Forest
In 1808 the new colony's government granted the Hurstville region's land to the brothers Captain John Townson and Robert Townson. John Townson's grant of 1,950 acres covered what is now Hurstville and part of Bexley. Robert Townson received the land that now takes in Penshurst, Mortdale and some of Peakhurst. That same year, four people were granted land in what is now Riverwood, and a further grant came in 1816.
In 1809 John Townson was granted a further 250 acres in what is now Kingsgrove and Beverly Hills. The brothers were unhappy with the land, which did not suit running sheep for wool, and it is likely they never took it up. Simeon Lord, a wealthy merchant, bought John Townson's land in 1812 and named it Lord's Forest. After Lord's death the land belonged to two men from the Bank of NSW.
In 1839 a dam was built across the Cooks River at Tempe, with a roadway along its top. By 1843 the road that became Forest Road reached a punt at Lugarno, winched by hand. On the far side of the river it continued all the way to Wollongong, but suited only travellers on horseback. The new road brought settlement to the Hurstville region; a settlement grew at Bottle Forest, which is now Heathcote. In 1850 Michael Gannon bought the Lord Forest estate and split it into small farms beside the present Croydon Road, and three bigger farms that Dent, Peake and Ibbotson bought. People came to call the area Gannon's Forest.
The name, the school and the railway
Hurstville takes its name from the English word "hurst", meaning "a wooded eminence", and "ville", meaning "town". The school opened in 1876, and School Inspector MacIntyre gave it the name "Hurstville". A post office opened at Gannon's Forest in 1881. In 1884 the railway station opened, on 15 October, and took the name Hurstville from the school.
A municipality was created in 1887, and Hurstville was declared a city in 1988. On 3 August 1920 two steam trains collided at the station: a train arriving from Central Railway Station plunged into the back of a train standing there, bound for Sutherland. Five people were killed and fifty injured.
Houses on Queens Road
Gladwyn stands at 96 Queens Road. It is an Italianate house that John Sproule, a builder in the area and an alderman of Hurstville Council, put up in 1893, having bought the land two years earlier. Owners came and went, and by 1906 the house carried the name Gladwyn. The council acquired it in 1986. It has since been restored and put to commercial use, and it is now the home of the Hurstville Archival Research and Local Studies Centre. Its heritage listing covers state and local levels.
In 1895 Ann Sproule bought a piece of land across Queens Road, from the Winn brothers of Newcastle. John Sproule built a house there, Yarra-Mundi, in 1897, and lived in it until 1904. Ownership changed several times. In 1981 the Danebank Church of England School for Girls acquired it, sold it in 2003, and afterwards it was adapted for commercial use. It is heritage-listed too.
MacMahon Street and the museum
Several historic buildings stand in MacMahon Street, where Georges River Council has its administrative offices in the Hurstville Civic Centre. They include the Friendly Pharmacy, the old fire station and the Ritz Hotel. The Hurstville Museum & Gallery, once known as the St George Regional Museum, is also there. Hurstville City Library is nearby on Queens Road, and the Centenary Bakery on Forest Road, a building that has been preserved, once held a museum.
The St Clair Recording Studio operated for roughly a year, beginning in December 1965 and ending in December 1966, and among the musicians it recorded were the Bee Gees. The band AC/DC played eight times at the Hurstville Civic Centre between 1974 and 1977. The museum's own website describes it as holding exhibitions and public programs and a collection of about 5,000 local objects and artworks.