North Ryde is a suburb located in the Northern Sydney region of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. North Ryde is located 15 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde. One of Australia's major business districts, North Ryde is home to many multi-national corporations such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Dimension Data and Honeywell. The suburb is the site of Macquarie University and its residents include those from the university academe and the research sector. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) also has a major site on Delhi Road in the Riverside Corporate Park. North Ryde shares the postcode of 2113 with adjacent suburbs Macquarie Park and East Ryde. These suburbs were once part of North Ryde and many businesses and residences in these suburbs still advertise their address as being in North Ryde. Adjacent Macquarie University was issued with its own postcode, 2109, by Australia Post in the late 1980s. History The earliest reference to the area being known as North Ryde appears to be after the district's first public school (which opened on 25 January 1878) changed its name from City View Public School to North Ryde Public School in 1879. North Ryde was mainly farming area, until in 1897, it was sold to a Catholic parish. North Ryde is an extension of the adjacent suburb of Ryde which was named after the 'Ryde Store', a business run by G.M. Pope. He adopted the name from his birthplace of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, in the UK. Ryde was the name used from the 1840s and adopted as the name of the municipality in 1870. Aboriginal culture The whole area between the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers was originally populated by Indigenous Australians and known by its Aboriginal name Wallumatta. Contact with the first white settlement's bridgehead into Australia quickly devastated much of the population through epidemics of smallpox and other diseases. The Aboriginal name survives in a local reserve, the Wallumatta Nature Reserve, located at the corner of Twin and Cressy roads, North Ryde. Very few remnants of Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest still exist. The most substantial undisturbed area is the Wallumatta Nature Reserve in North Ryde, which is owned and managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. This small and critically endangered reserve, also known as the Macquarie Hospital