In 1797 Rowland and Elizabeth Hassall landed in Tahiti as part of the London Missionary Society’s first expedition to the Pacific Islands.  In 1798 they arrived in Sydney seeking refuge from the immense difficulties they had experienced in Tahiti.

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Uncertain as to what the future might hold, the couple steadily gained a foothold in the young penal colony of New South Wales. They established a general store at Parramatta and commenced farming at Camden to the south and over the Blue Mountains to the west.

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In time Rowland and Elizabeth’s four sons and four daughters had families of their own, who spread to Queensland, Victoria, and New Zealand. Some sixty grandchildren produced a fourth generation of approximately 300 great-grand-children.