Roselands is a suburb to the south-west of the Sydney CBD, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Roselands is located 16 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district in the City of Canterbury-Bankstown. It is one of the easternmost suburbs in the Western Sydney area and is one of the major suburbs in Sydney without a train station. Geography Roselands lies in the Cooks River watershed. The soil is clay, based on Wianamatta shale and is on the eastern edge of the great Cumberland Plain which extends westward to the Hawkesbury River and into the Blue Mountains. The topography is low rolling hills. Before settlement, the vegetation was open eucalypt woodland. History Aboriginal The first inhabitants of surrounding areas were Australian Aboriginals. At the time of British settlement in 1788 the inhabitants were Aborigines of the Darug language group and they called themselves Kuri or Koori. Land grants by the new colonial government began in about 1810. European This area was originally part of the suburb of Punchbowl and still shares its postcode of 2196. H.R. Morgan was granted land in the area in 1842. John Fenwick bought in about 1880 from Matthew Norman in the area between Canterbury, Canarys and Bonds Roads. He built Belmore House on this land, which was demolished for the construction of Roselands Shopping Centre. The closest railway line was built to the neighbouring suburb of Belmore in 1895 and extended to Bankstown in 1909. The suburb takes its name from the plant nursery that originally occupied the land. Later a golf course was built with same name which was taken over to build the shopping centre. It became a suburb on 9 February 1987, after some years of agitation by local residents and members of parliament. Commercial area Roselands Shopping Centre was the third fully enclosed shopping precinct in Australia, opened in October 1965 (predated by Monaro Mall [March 1963] in Canberra and Miranda Fair [March 1964] in Sydney). Older open-air shopping precincts in Australia included Chermside Drive-in Shopping Centre (May 1957) in Brisbane, Top Ryde Drive-in Shopping Centre (November 1957) in Sydney, Chadstone Shopping Centre [October 1960] in Melbourne and Warringah Mall (April 1963) in Sydney. Roselands was built on the site of a golf course. It boasted a large Grace Bros Department Store (now Myer), a single movie cinema, an indoor rainfall water feature (the 'raindrop fountain'), tennis courts