creating long, narrow parcels. Mackay's grant is among the first series of farm allotments made on the outskirts of Sydney. The subsequent subdivision of the grant took place very early in history of the site. While suburban subdivisions were made in the surrounding area during the later 20th century, the land at Rose Cottage remained relatively intact to its 1806 configuration, due to the long occupation of the Rose family and the formation of the Australiana Pioneer Village. This configuration is still evident in the cadastral layout of Rose Cottage and the associated land today, and is representative of the land subdivision patterns of the early 19th century as it took place in the area of Wilberforce. After Bill McLachlan acquired Rose Cottage and the associated land in 1961, he set about obtaining much of the land contained in Mackay's 30 acre grant to establish the Australiana Pioneer Village. McLachlan transported other old buildings of many types to the site to create a heritage theme park, which opened in 1970. The collection of heritage buildings, machinery, and other artefacts together into an open-air village-themed park was a trend of the 1970s and 1980s. The place has a strong or special association with a person, or group of persons, of importance of cultural or natural history of New South Wales's history. Rose Cottage is associated with the Rose family, who were among the first fifteen free settlers to arrive in Australia on the Bellona in 1793. Thomas Rose was an experienced farmer from Dorset, England who responded to the Government's incentive to attract settlers of a land grant, tools, provisions, and the service of convicts free of charge for two years. David Collins, in his assessment of the first group of free settlers said Thomas Rose was "the most respectable of these people, and apparently the best calculated for a bona-fide settler." No other structures built by the first and second generations of the Rose family are known to survive; however, there is photographic evidence for the third generation Rose family cottage at Freemans Reach on the Hawkesbury. Thomas' wife, Jane Rose, gave birth to a son six months after their arrival in the colony, the first free child born to free settlers in the colony. In the Sydney Gazette obituary for Jane Rose in 1828, it was noted that she was the first woman to attain the status of great-grandmother