Rose Cottage is a heritage-listed former cottage and now museum at Rose Street, Wilberforce, City of Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1810 to 1820 by Thomas Rose. The property is owned by the Thomas and Jane Rose Family Society Inc. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. History Indigenous occupation The lower Hawkesbury River was home to the Dharug people. The proximity to the Nepean River and South Creek qualifies it as a key area for food resources for indigenous groups. The Dharug and Darkinjung people called the river Deerubbin and it was a vital source of food and transport. Early history of Wilberforce Early European exploration of the Hawkesbury River began in 1789 with a series of expeditions initiated by Governor of New South Wales Arthur Phillip in his search for fertile land to serve the new colony's agricultural purposes. Although the Hawkesbury River valley was penetrated from Broken Bay to the site of present-day Windsor by 1790, evidence of very high floods observed by Phillip and other explorers prevented Governor Phillip from consenting to make land grants in the area. Despite Phillip's unwillingness to settle the Hawkesbury, Lieutenant-Governor Major Francis Grose proceeded in making 22 land grants in the district of Mulgrave Place in 1794, less than two years after Phillip departed the colony. Grose may have resorted to settling the Hawkesbury due to a lack of land available in the area between Sydney and Parramatta, after Grose had made numerous grants there to members of the New South Wales Corps. Grose reported in a dispatch in 1794, "I have settled on the banks of the Hawkesbury twenty-two settlers, who seem very much pleased with their farms. They describe the soil as particularly rich, and they inform me whatever they have planted has grown in the greatest luxuriance." The first land grants consisted of 30 acres each, all with frontage to the river. Nineteen of the original 22 settlers were former convicts who had finished serving their sentences. Despite the challenges posed by inexperience, poor seed stock, and a lack of livestock to drive ploughs, it was reported that within the first 12 months, the average yield at the Hawkesbury settlement was 25 bushels per acre, double the yield elsewhere in the colony. Spurred on by the initial success, further grants of 25 to 30 acres