History of Long Point

Long Point is the only suburb of Campbelltown that is named after its geographic location.

Look at any map and you'll see why. The area juts out in a long point from the bottom of Macquarie Fields into the hilly Army Reserve beyond. Many old-time locals referred to the peninsula - surrounded by the Georges River - as "Long Nose Point" or simply "The Point".

When Campbelltown Council proposed making the Long Point name official in 1975, it showcased an old plan of the Campbellfield Estate dated from 1844. It was prepared for E.J.H. Knapp, a Sydney land surveyor, and showed the north-west portion of the estate as "the long point forest land".

Since the 1970's, Long Point has been developed as a Scenic Protection Area neighbourhood similar to Kentlyn or Minto Heights. And like those two suburbs, it has a strange mix of tiny farms cottages and large brick mansions.

In the 1930's , it was actually used as a "hiding place" for gangsters. East Sydney underworld figures would "disappear'" discretely in small houses set up in the bush if things got too hot with the law.

Many of the early residents were also families left homeless by the Great Depression who built little shanties in the bushland. Here they could live by catching fish in the river or rabbits in the scrub.

Long Point was frontier life, with stock theft often reported. As late as the 1960's, bus drivers warned they would omit the area from their route unless the "shocking state" of the roads improved.

Today, the tiny suburb still only boasts three roadways.

Wills Road gets its name from Thomas Wills, brother of Sarah Wills. She is perhaps better known to local history as Sarah Redfern, the wife of Minto's Dr William Redfern.

Early parish maps show that Thomas once held almost all of what is now Long Point, which became the most far-flung portion of Redfern's Campbellfield Estate. Newspaper reports indicate the road way was only sealed in 1971.

Oakely Road was created from a curve off Bensley Road and is called after a family that once lived nearby.

How the Kingdon Parade name originated is not so clear, and in old newspapers it was often spelt "Kingdom Parade". Other locals spelt it 'Kindon Parade'.

"Campbelltown's Streets and Suburbs - How and why they got their names" written by Jeff McGill, Verlie Fowler and Keith Richardson, 1995, published by Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society.

Reproduced with permission of the authors.