The first recorded contact in the Lewisham area was April 1788. It was amicable and the place became known as Bullanamung. There followed a half-century of timber-getting, piggeries, horse paddocks and abattoirs while the land-owners tested the market.
The most successful of the real-estate developments was the Boulevarde Estate, home to a NSW Premier, eight parliamentarians and two women who were pioneers in their own way. The Boulevarde Estate heralded Sydney’s ‘garden suburb movement’ as the gentry built some fine houses and one mansion.
‘Andromeda’ in the Boulevarde Estate (pictured) was purchased by Peter Moustaka with ‘gold money’; his daughter was the first woman of Greek heritage to graduate from an Australian university.
Experienced tour guide Mark Matheson edited the Royal Australian Historical Society’s magazine in the 1990s and produced the ‘Victorian Villas’ booklet which won the National Trust Heritage Award for that year. The tour also takes in the Lewisham viaduct, the location of a thousand Catholic graves buried in a private cemetery, a hospital and two schools - the tangible and useful results of a Cardinal’s emotional blackmail!