West Ryde is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. West Ryde is located 16 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde and is part of the Northern Sydney region. Ryde, North Ryde and East Ryde are separate suburbs. The suburbs of Denistone, Denistone West, Meadowbank and Melrose Park share the 2114 postcode with West Ryde. History West Ryde is an extension 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, UK. West Ryde is one of 16 suburbs that form the City of Ryde. The City of Ryde is approximately from the centre of Sydney and occupies most of the land between the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers. It is bisected from west to east by one of Sydney's busiest roads, Victoria Road. It is crossed north to south by another main road, Lane Cove Road, and is skirted on the north-west by the M2 Hills Motorway and Epping Road. At the time of the arrival of Europeans at Sydney Cove in January 1788, the Wallumedegal or Wallumede were the traditional owners of the area and they called it Wallumetta. This clan formed part of a large Dharug language group. Early landholders Throughout much of the nineteenth century, most of the land in West Ryde, Eastwood and Denistone was consolidated in a handful of large estates owned by a few of the colonial elites, notably the Blaxland and the Darvall families. Much of the land in this suburb lying to the west of the main northern railway line was originally granted to Dr William Balmain in the mid to late 1790s. Balmain was one of the assistant surgeons on the First Fleet, having sailed on the Alexander. He worked as a magistrate in the colony and, due to the shortage of money at that time, was paid with the labour of convicts to work on his land. However, it is not known how much clearing and cultivation was done during those years. In 1801 Balmain and his family returned to England, where he died in 1803. His heirs were Jane and John Henderson, his children by a convict woman, Margaret Dawson (Henderson was his mother's maiden name). While they were in England, the