Wilberforce Park is a heritage-listed public parkland at 47 George Road, Wilberforce, City of Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia. It was first established in 1810 by Governor Lachlan Macquarie and surveyed by James Meehan in 1811. It is also known as Great Square, Reserved Square and the Recreation Ground. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 November 2011. History The town of Wilberforce lies immediately above the rich alluvial flood plain of the Upper Hawkesbury River. The natural food resources, both animal and vegetable, afforded by the soil and the water, had been attractive to Aboriginal people for millennia before European settlement in 1794 and subsequent years transformed the plain into intensive farms. The area available for land grants along what became known as Wilberforce Reach was constrained in 1804 by the creation of Phillip Common by Governor King. This well-wooded upland area of 6150 acres (2600 hectares) was available as rough grazing for the farmers on the cleared agricultural land beside the river. When Governor Macquarie arrived in the colony in 1810, he was aware of the problems created by the propensity of the Hawkesbury to rise rapidly in flood and inundate the low-lying farms. By December 1810, the Governor was ready to implement a plan to create five new towns on higher ground along the Upper Hawkesbury and Lower Nepean, where allotments would be reserved for those farming on the plain, so that they might have a secure refuge for themselves, their families, their seed-corn and animals in time of flood. In all four Hawkesbury towns, Richmond, Windsor, Pitt Town and Wilberforce, the initial site was largely or wholly resumed from King's Commons. Wilberforce is the only one of the five towns sited on the inland side of the river. The river frontage along Wilberforce Reach, close to the future town, had been fully occupied by the end of 1794 and the area along the north-eastern part of York Reach was being farmed by 1795. In Macquarie's time the greatest density of settlement on the inland side still lay to the south-west of the town, in the boot-shaped area within the great bend of the river along the Argyle, Windsor and Wilberforce Reaches. The site chosen for the town on 6 December 1810 was convenient for access to the river and its farms. Except for King Road, closest to the plain, it